Artist
Statement

Growing up in western Oklahoma, I spent a lot of time traversing the state via I-40 and Route 66. Highway signs and billboards for motels, diners, and gas stations became a familiar and entrancing part of the landscape. The colors, typefaces, and visual tropes of those signs became embedded in my subconscious at an early age and still inform much of my work today.

As I studied graphic design in college, I came to understand the process of design as “problem-solving”—connecting a message to a viewer in an effective and memorable way. Then throughout graduate school, I became familiar with the world of semiotics—the study of signs and symbols. This gave me a new vocabulary and theoretical framework to understand the simple, yet profound, function of a sign. I came to learn that signs are more than just advertisements protruding from the horizon, but rather, powerful containers of meaning.

When you say out loud, “I’d like to construct a billboard,” it feels a bit crazy. However, with the help of an understanding wife and a brother-in-law who can build anything, we were able to bring it to fruition. Many of the themes come from a fictional place called Vita, which simply means life. I realize that the idea of a billboard with messages from a made-up town seems odd. That’s sort of the whole point.

The billboard is in its second phase and I’m currently in the planning stages of phase III.

—Corey Lee Fuller

My daughter Nora with her official Vita Feed Mill hat.