Signs & Banners

Signs and banners documenting hotels, roadside America, theaters, performers, and places in transition.

Each piece is painted by hand as part of the evolving Velvet Paw archive. Some remain in the collection. Others are commissioned for the places that inspired them.

Carlton Arms Hotel
New York City, 2026

Created this circus banner style painting after spending over 3 months at the Carlton Arms Hotel in Manhattan during the Summer of 2025. It was my first full summer that I took off after leaving my successful Wall Street career that I had built over he previous 7 years. A summer that I spent exploring my creative identity and self.

The banner is a visual record of this season where I connected deeply with several NYC creative scenes, attended a 5 week Summer Intensive Improv program at the People’s Improv Theater (PIT) as well as developed my second burlesque The Red Clown Act while studying with the New York School of Burlesque at Coney Island USA. I was inspired to create the act (self portrait image of me in my room before the show) from the predominately red and yellow hand painted and chaotic “love bomb” walls in my suite.

Distorted Lady (2026) explores the moment identity begins to slip.

Created in the days after I graduated from Coney Island Clown Skool, the banner reflects the strange territory between costume and self, performance and perception. The banner is based on a fleeting photographic moment but expands into something imagined…a self portrait of myself halfway between who I was and who I am becoming.

Credits

  • Based on photography by Jim McDermott @thetrickness

  • Created following a banner painting workshop at Coney Island USA taught by Toni-Lee Sangatiano @leetoni