Kurt Boyer was lost. He’s quick to admit that now.
It was 1987. Or maybe 1988. Time has a way of blurring itself, especially when things are going bad.
Boyer had just finished a stint in the Navy. After spending high school in Saugerties, as he puts it, “being high all the time,” he thrived in the military. He graduated top of his class in mess school and worked as a cook on a Navy submarine. He was following a family tradition: His father served in Korea, his grandfather in World War II. His great-great grandfather fought for the Union in the Civil War.
But none of that seemed to matter now. In his mid-20s, Boyer found himself adrift in Detroit, struggling with drugs and alcohol. He managed a Best Western by day and slept in an abandoned building with a shotgun on his chest by night.
Things were bad and getting worse.
Some might say he was waiting for a sign.
Whether he knew it or not, he was about to get one that would change the course of his life forever.
The Catskills Vibe
Anyone who has lived in or visited the Catskills over the past four decades has likely encountered Kurt Boyer’s work. Since 1989, he has been designing and making hand-crafted signs that have become part of the region’s visual fabric—from the Nest Egg in Phoenicia, his personal favorite, to Bread Alone cafés in Woodstock and Boiceville, to the Olive Free Library.
Boyer’s signs are ubiquitous. His shop, Boyer Signs, sits next to his home in Shandaken where he lives with his wife, Cynnie, and where they raised their now adult daughter, Claire.
Now 64, Boyer has spent the past 37 years carving, painting, and stenciling. His work appears on businesses, residences, and automobiles throughout the region.
“Kurt has plausibly created more of the Catskills vibe than anyone alive,” says Shandaken Deputy Supervisor Robert Drake.
But it almost never happened.
Even though he had carved his first sign at age 7 and grew up with a workshop in the basement of his childhood home where his graphic designer father would take on woodworking projects, Boyer hadn’t thought about signmaking as a profession, let alone a calling.
In 1988, when Kurt was still trying to find his way in Detroit, his sister, Kate, was starting AE Advertising back home in the Catskills. She called her struggling brother and beckoned him home to help with her fledgling business. Her first design was for Bread Alone.
Boyer worked on that sign and never looked back.
“My sister is the reason I am in the sign business,” Boyer says, adding that he was always good with his hands but had no formal training.
Kate Boyer says she didn’t know the full extent of her brother’s struggles at the time.
“He had some issues on and off in high school, but I wasn’t fully aware of how drastic it was,” she says. “I knew he was always talented and it would be a good fit for him to come into what I had started.”
Kate, who lives in Phoenicia and now runs Heron Creek Press, said she got into signmaking after developing an early interest in calligraphy.
“We grew up as artists,” Kate says. “The signmaking just came out of that.”
Kurt quickly learned the basics of graphic design and signmaking. Enamored with the craft, he rented a workspace in Saugerties—“with no heat,” he says with a laugh—and struck out on his own. He got sober a year after returning home and has remained so for 36 years.
Around that time, he took a class at the Woodstock School of Art and realized he had an artistic side that he hadn’t fully acknowledged.
“It changed my whole signmaking. I didn’t always consider myself an artist,” he says.
His wife quickly dispelled him of that notion.
“She said, ‘Kurt, you’re a fucking artist!’”
‘A paragon of morality and integrity’
Boyer met Kate McGloughlin, a local artist based in Olivebridge, in September 1989 at the Woodstock School of Art. He credits McGloughlin for much of his development as an artist and says they quickly became “like brother and sister.”
McGloughlin agrees.
“Kurt and I had similar struggles and found similar solutions,” McGloughlin says. “Because I am an artist as well, we gravitated toward each other.”
It was more than Boyer’s work that drew her to him. McGloughlin, who is now an instructor at the Woodstock School of Art, says she marveled at the humanity with which Boyer cared for his aging mother who suffered from multiple sclerosis. Later she watched him care for McGloughlin’s own mother and aunt as they aged.
“Kurt is deeply honest and unafraid of telling the truth, but he’s a humble guy,” McGloughlin says. “He really is a paragon of morality and integrity. And he’s the most tender man I’ve ever met.”
“To know Kurt is to know his work,” she adds. “One of my favorite things in the world is to drive throughout the Hudson Valley and see Kurt’s work.”
Boyer once played golf with McGloughlin but eventually gave it up.
“I was losing my serenity,” he says. “I needed to hit something.”
He took up ice hockey instead. That was until his wife, worried about injury, persuaded him to quit.
From 2004 to 2008, Boyer took a brief break from signmaking to open the Black Bear Hollow Café in Shandaken with Cynnie. He returned to his Navy roots, cooking in the kitchen. The restaurant did well, but the pull of signmaking never left him. He eventually returned to it full time.
Boyer talks about his journey with the sagacity and humility of a person who has seen—and survived—more than most. He says he doesn’t take for granted the serendipity of his sister’s call decades ago when he was at his lowest, or meeting people like McGloughlin, which changed the course of his existence.
“We have a great life. We love this community and we know how fortunate we are to live in a place like this,” he says of his Shandaken home, where he and Cynnie care for two horses, two goats, a couple of cats and 30 chickens. Asked if he ever thinks about retirement, he shrugs.
“Money isn’t really my thing. That’s not why I do this,” Boyer says. “I’ll probably be working til lunch time on the day I die.”
Kate Boyer says she thinks about the hard times her brother went through. She downplays the role her fateful call played in his getting sober, but speaks with pride about how he handled his recovery and the person he became after.
“He is a great brother and has helped me with many things in my life,” she says. “He certainly reclaimed his life. I always knew he would.”
Jim Rich is a senior reporter for The Overlook. You can reach him at jim@theoverlooknews.com.