S.C. Billboard: Set the Controls for Secret Caverns
Sharon Springs, New York
The largest of all of the billboards advertising Secret Caverns is also its most elaborate. Artists Todd DelMarter and Kurt Piller threw pretty much everything in their iconography into this one: flying saucers, a Viking longboat, Bigfoot wearing a fez, pyramids topped with eyeballs floating on clouds, a V-formation of General Lee's flying over an erupting volcano. Said Todd, "It was one of those signs where after we'd penciled it in we said, 'My god what have we done.'"
It's almost 15 miles distant, at the gravitational periphery of Secret Caverns and its impulse quasars. Its panoramic tableau of the fantastic world that awaits explorers is too much to absorb in one viewing, even if you hold still and stare at it for a while.
Kurt described the billboard simply as "Beautiful," but was upset that it has twice been destroyed by runaway cars. We suggested that the drivers may simply have been mesmerized by what they saw. "If we caused it," said Kurt, "that makes me feel better."