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| Photo Credit: AP. |
NEW YORK (AP) — For years, Miguel and Carlos Cevallos made a living by drawing posters for neighborhood nightclubs, taco trucks and restaurants in Queens, painting in the businesses’ basements or on their tables and attracting clients by word of mouth.
Until an
Instagram account changed a lot of that.
Now, hip
Brooklyn ice cream shops and Manhattan retro diners wait their turn to get one
of the brothers’ colorful signs. They’re in demand in San Francisco music
stores, national restaurant chains, bars in Belgium and bakeries in South
Korea.
It doesn’t
matter that the brothers are more than 80 years old or that the two, born in
Ecuador and raised in Colombia, speak limited English. They have embraced their
new customers and draw all day in the Manhattan apartment they have shared for
nearly 20 years.
“Destiny is
like this. Sometimes one finds success later in life,” Carlos Cevallos said
recently, while sipping a tea in an empty Manhattan diner. Dressed in suits and
ties, as they are every day, the brothers shared a muffin.
Recent
commissions have come from a bagel shop in Manhattan’s Little Italy
neighborhood, a newsstand in Manhattan’s West Village, an Oregon-based
restaurant chain and a Los Angeles pop-up veggie burger shop. NYCgo, the city’s
official guide for tourists and New Yorkers, recently asked the brothers to
draw Queens’ iconic Unisphere, the giant metal globe built for the 1964 World’s
Fair.
“They have a special touch, so nice and
colorful,” said Marina Cortes, manager of the West Village diner La
Bonbonniere. The brothers’ “Breakfast All Day!” sign is displayed on the
restaurant’s terrace.
“A Life
Without Anything Good, Is Bad” reads a poster the brothers drew for Van Leeuwen
Ice Cream. “Daily Special. Pick Any Two Sandwiches and Pay For Both!” reads
another they did for Regina’s Grocery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Done with
acrylic paints, the Cevallos brothers’ playful, childlike posters have big
letters and a nostalgic look. Miguel does the drawings and Carlos the coloring,
together crafting about six posters per week.
The brothers
field five to 20 requests weekly for their work.
The family
moved from Ecuador to Colombia to follow an uncle who was a Catholic priest and
worked in Bogota. Used to drawing since they were kids, Carlos, Miguel and
their oldest brother, Victor, opened an art studio and poster shop in Bogota’s
Chapinero neighborhood.
Victor moved
to New York in 1969, and Carlos joined him in 1974. For years, they worked at a
studio in Times Square until rent increases prompted a shift to Queens.
In the
1980s, they drew posters that announced performances at a Queens club called La
Esmeralda.
“They would
pay so little per poster. It was sad,” Carlos said. The posters featured such
artists as Mexican singer Armando Manzanero and Chilean Lucho Gatica.
Miguel,
meanwhile, took care of their mother until she died at age 101. He moved to New
York in 2005 to join his siblings. Victor, a mentor to his younger brothers,
died in 2012.
Eventually,
Aviram Cohen, who builds and installs audiovisual art at museums, saw the
brothers’ posters in Queens and tracked them down to request one for his wife’s
new yoga studio. In 2018, he opened their Instagram account, @cevallos_bros,
which became a lifeline for the brothers after the coronavirus pandemic hit.
“I did it
out of admiration for their work, and after meeting them, I understood that it
would all disappear. Most of the businesses would throw away the posters,” said
Cohen, 42. “I felt strongly that different kinds of people and subcultures
could enjoy their art.”
He was
right. The account now has more than 25,000 followers and has become an archive
of their work, as well as a source of orders.
“I just love
their story,” said Happy David, who manages the Instagram accounts of La
Bonbonniere and Casa Magazines, a Manhattan newsstand for which she has also
commissioned the brothers’ work. It reminds her of signs seen in her native
Philippines.
In a digital
world, “a lot of people are going back to craft,” David said. “We want to
connect, and we want to feel that there are hands that made these.”
When asked
whether they plan to retire soon, the Cevallos brothers answer with a quick
“no.”
Where do
they get their energy from?
“We eat
healthy,” they respond with a smile.