One of my first "unofficial" jobs was working for the billboard company for which my mom was an office manager. I swept floors, organized gallons of paint by Pantone color, and painted over old plywood panels and billboard flex (the large vinyl sheets billboards are painted on) for reuse. Not particularly exciting stuff ...

The painters, though, seemed to be really cool things, especially to my 14-year-old eyes. It was endlessly interesting to watch the art for ads go from small designs on paper in the office to huge paintings on vinyl in the cavernous shop. The one or two guys who hand-painted directly on walls throughout the city were especially revered (and you can see why below). In fact, our shop was the company that painted the famous Bigsby & Kruthers wall along the Kennedy on the north side of Chicago. During one of the Bulls' championship runs, Dennis Rodman was featured prominently on the wall and the painters would change Rodman's hair color on the mural every time he changed his; it became such a traffic nuisance, they had to remove it.

I was intrigued, then, to see "Up There," a short documentary about the dying art of hand-painted billboards in a new digital age. Watching the apprenticeship process and the years of training necessary to paint wall murals gave me newfound respect for the guys I worked with so many years ago. Though painting ads probably isn't what many of these painters would like to be doing with their considerable skills, their dedication to the process is fascinating.