Mayer, a largely self-taught sign painter who worked as an art teacher in Marquette schools for decades, began painting signs commercially in the early 1980s and still remains an active artist and sign painter today — he recently completed a sign for Marquette’s Lagniappe Cajun Creole Eatery in early October, right as he celebrated his 85th birthday.

Many of Mayer’s older signs, such as the iconic Thill’s Fish House sign, remain distinct and vibrant after decades of exposure to the elements due to his process, he said.

“There’s few people that do the signs this way. This is all made with expensive sign paint, it’s been designed to flow better, last longer, more intense colors, so forth,” Mayer said. “I always worked with the best material, when you see (what a sign looks like after) 37 to 38 years, it pays,” Mayer said.

His hand-painted designs have also graced billboards, windows, posters, interpretative signs and banners in the area — his distinctive signage style has been found everywhere from the U.P. 200 to nature trails over the past decades.

A Polaroid snapshot from the 1980s shows one of Mayer’s hand-painted signs in progress along U.S. 41. Mayer said this particular project took him about a week to complete. (Carl Mayer courtesy photo)

While Mayer’s signs are diverse in purpose and format, they all highlight his artistry, attention to detail and sense of color and design.

“The colors that you use are so related because they’re the mood maker, whether it’s a painting or whether it’s a sign, it’s a mood maker,” he said.

As a watercolorist who “studied with the pros,” such as Nita Engle, Robert E. Wood, Edgar Whitney and Zoltan Szabo, Mayer’s professional training and love of illustration show through in his signs, which attracted many clients.

“They used to have a haunted house for Halloween and so forth, so I did up the windows for this, they liked me because I do a lot of illustrating, I did a lot of pictorials with them,” he said.

Each sign showcases Mayer’s lifelong love of art and design, which began when he was a child growing up in the Keweenaw Peninsula.

A sign painted by Mayer for Old Style Beer in Marquette County is show in a Polaroid photo. (Carl Mayer courtesy photo)

“I’m a guy from that little town in the Copper Country, Lake Linden. And we didn’t have any art in the curriculum, not at that time,” he said.

Even though art class wasn’t in the curriculum, Mayer drew constantly while growing up as he worked to develop his skills as an artist. In high school, he began making posters, which would be the predecessor to posters and signs he would make while in college.

However, it was a few years before Mayer would attend college for his art degrees, as he served in the Korean War for just over four years.

When he returned to the area, he attended Suomi College in the Keweenaw for a year before attending Northern Michigan University, where he would earn Bachelors and Masters degrees in art education.

“They had a lettering class of basic gothic manuscript and it was with poster paint, just poster paint and you did posters. And that’s how I started getting into it, doing posters, I liked it, I liked the letter form,” Mayer said. “In college at Northern (Michigan University), there were a lot of people, men and women that were running for president of class and so forth and I’d do posters for them … and that’s really how I got started.”

Frosty Treats in Marquette, which was one of Mayer’s earliest professional sign-painting projects in the 1980s, is shown in a Polaroid snapshot. (Carl Mayer courtesy photo)

After college, Mayer went on to teach at schools in the Marquette area for several decades — in Mayer’s first year of teaching, Bill Brady, who was the school’s principal at the time, gave Mayer advice that “always stayed with” him.

“He said ‘Your students and what you teach them, they’ll probably forget much of it. But they’ll never forget how you treat them, how you treat them. That’s all important.'”

This advice, as well as Mayer’s own experiences as a young artist, would impact Mayer’s career greatly, he said, as he always worked to inspire confidence in his students by guiding them artistically while treating them with kindness and respect.

Mayer said he’s grateful for the generations of students, teachers, administrators and community members he’s worked with throughout his career, as he’s learned much from all of them.

“The community of Marquette has been a marvelous community to do all my teaching in from the very beginning because the community has supported education,” he said

The iconic Thill’s Fish House sign, painted by Mayer decades ago, is shown in a Polaroid picture that was taken shortly after its completion. (Carl Mayer courtesy photo)

Overall, Mayer has been glad to see decades of support for both arts and education in Marquette, he said.

“These are people with vision that made it happen and again. The people of the community of Marquette and the area have supported it and have supported it well, and it’s to their compliments,” he said. “I’ve been so fortunate to live here.”

He is also thankful to have led a full life of artistic expression through his personal and professional work, he said.

“I can’t believe my good fortune, simply because I drew every day since I can remember,” he said.