Who Paints Those Secret Caverns Signs, Anyway?

Editor’s Note: This is a story from the Sunday edition The Daily Editor of Cobleskill, which I edited for five years in the late 1980s-early1990s.  I sent our lead reporter out into the Cave Country to ask, “Who’s painting those signs at Secret Caverns. From Nov. 7, 1993

By MICHAEL J. MARTINEZ, Staff Reporter

Those who come to Schoharie County to see Howe Caverns leave with knowledge of Secret Caverns even if they never went there.

A drive down Caverns Road in Howes Cave is a drive past sign after sign for Secret Caverns, each one a complex and unique piece of art. Most showoff the “Caveman,” the caverns’ semi- official mascot. All boast the 100-foor underground waterfall at the culmination of the tour.

The signs are not the production of professional artists, but a group of tour guides at the caverns, led by long-time guide and artist, Kurt Pillar.

Pillar has been a guide at Secret Caverns for eight years and doing signs for about as long. The 23-year-old college graduate has no formal training in art, let alone in art on such a grand scale.

“Nothing can really prepare you to draw and paint something as large as a billboard,” Pillar said while standing in front of his works on Route 7. “You just have to wing it until it’s right.”

The signs are eccentric and complex in content and language, almost making fun of themselves.

The jokes can be decidedly cerebral, and the puns can get quite bad, Pillar said.

“We sometimes look up at the sign, and say, ‘God, that’s a really bad pun,’ but that’s the fun of it,” Pillar said.

Pillar, along with fellow artists Tyrone Donnelly and Todd Delmarty have been responsible for all of Secret Caverns’ cartoon signs. Their most recent accomplishment was a new facade for the Secret Caverns building, which turned the front of the lodge into a leering bat for Halloween.

WHIRLWIND START

Pillar’s art career on the billboard palette started when a tornado came through the area years ago¹, knocking down many of the Secret Caverns’ signs throughout the county. “Sign painting used to be really boring, sort of at the bottom of the list of things that tour guides wanted to do,” Pillar said. “Then, a whole bunch of us got together and put our devious little minds to work.”

Caverns manager R.J. Mallery was at first skeptical, Pillar said, but was soon persuaded into allowing the guides-turned-sign painters to let loose their creativity. “Painting those signs was a really unique opportunity,” Pillar said. “I don’t think R.J. realizes what it did for us.”

It takes about a week for Pillar and crew to paint a sign. Sketches are drawn on paper and shared with Mallery for approval. Pillar then translates the sketches onto the blank sign before painting. “It involves a lot of stepping back and looking, lots of double-checking and lots of up and down on the ladder,” said Pillar.

The signs have become locally famous, and rumor has it that some of them contain subliminal messages of sorts, something that Pillar denies.

About five years ago I did put in a few messages like ‘Drink Milk’ or ‘Brush Your Teeth,’ but nothing really satanic or anything,” Pillar said. “Now I just paint a few squiggles to throw people off. All of the ones with messages have been painted over a long time ago.”

Pillar’s favorite rumor came from a person in Schoharie who believed that the guides had used special paint that only showed up under car headlights to create the messages in the signs.

“I could just see us walking into Selkirk’s Hardware Store² asking for that,” Pilar said with a laugh. “I think that rumor started because we were really behind and decided to paint at night. We lit the sign up with floodlights and some car headlights and I think that person probably drove by, wondering what was going on.”

Pillar recently graduated from Hobart and William Smith College with a degree in medieval studies. He has just finished his eighth season as a tour guide—painter—for Secret Caverns. He is a little unsure of what the future holds but he is certain that sign painting is not in that future.

“I couldn’t stand painting signs for businesses, especially if they wouldn’t let me be creative as Secret Caverns did,” Pillar said.

¹ Summer, 1983

² Now Ace Hardware, East Main Street, Cobleskill.