Crystal Burnham Is Helping Letter Culpeper Into the Landscape
By Culpeper HQ ·
<p>Crystal Burnham has an artistic ambition involving a restaurant bathroom. Specifically, she would like to paint her “Toilet Rules” typographic mural there, a design already living on her own bathroom wall and, in chalkboard form, in other people’s homes. Given unlimited budget, wall space and logistics, some artists might dream of monumental scale. Burnham keeps coming back to something considerably more practical. “Something fun that needs to be on more walls!”</p>
<p>That combination of lettering, usefulness and a little mischief fits Burnham’s work through Cwitto Design Studio, LLC, the business she created in 2015. An owner and handlettering designer, she makes hand-created art for businesses, including murals, windows, signs, menus and lettering. Culpeper, particularly downtown Main Street and Davis Street, has helped shape what that work became. “Without a charming downtown, my art would be completely different,” she says.</p>
<!-- continue-from-newsletter -->
<h2>From a Chalkboard to a Business</h2>
<p>Cwitto did not begin primarily as a hand-lettering and mural business. Burnham started it as a graphic design service, working mainly in a medium far removed from a painted wall. Then her business networking friends, who knew she had good writing, began asking her to make small chalkboard signs for their vendor-event tables.</p>
<p>The opportunities grew larger and more varied. Eventually, Burnham scrapped nearly all of her computer graphic design services and put her attention on art created by hand for businesses.</p>
<p>The transition suited an idea that had been with her for some time. Burnham says she had always thought about building a business around her artistic skills. Friends and family during college and early adulthood encouraged her to become an entrepreneur. The particular shape that entrepreneurship eventually took arrived through those requests, one chalkboard sign leading into a broader range of work.</p>
<p>Even the company name reaches back further. Cwitto, pronounced “Quit-tow,” is how Burnham said Crystal when she was a young child. When she was brainstorming business names in 2015, she remembered the saying, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” The childhood pronunciation stuck.</p>
<p>“It may be difficult to read or spell, but it has special meaning,” Burnham says. “I believe that that authenticity shows through my work.”</p>
<h2>Letters with a Job to Do</h2>
<p>What looks effortless when finished also has more going on than tidy penmanship. Burnham says people can mistake hand lettering for simply having good handwriting. Her distinction is important: “It’s the art of illustrating letters to fit a shape, style or theme.”</p>
<p>Scale changes the possibilities, too. Murals tend to bring out what Burnham considers her best work because of their longevity. Sidewalk signs offer another kind of challenge, providing room for close-up lettering styles and illustrations. And when somebody hands her a blank wall, window or sign, she does not begin simply by deciding what would look nice.</p>
<p>She considers the client’s target audience and asks what the project is supposed to accomplish. Is the aim to beautify downtown or draw people into a business? Is there a message to communicate, or does the piece simply need to look good? She also considers what surrounds the business on the same street.</p>
<p>“My ultimate goal is to help my clients stand out in a way that reflects positively on what they have to offer,” she says.</p>
<h2>The Downtown That Shaped the Work</h2>
<p>That attention to the street around the artwork helps explain why Culpeper matters to Burnham’s style. Main Street and Davis Street, she says, represent the kind of place where she always wanted to work. Public art is part of what she notices about downtown, both the prominent pieces visible while driving through and the work a passerby can miss by never getting out of the car.</p>
<p>Burnham points visitors toward Culpeper Renaissance Inc.’s mural walk, which lists downtown murals and public art. In her view, those pieces offer photo opportunities while bringing life and beauty to downtown. </p>
<p>Her favorite local recommendations can be considerably less formal. When friends or family visit, Burnham says their number one destination is Pinto Thai on Davis Street, her favorite restaurant for its food and customer service. One lunch there with her children became particularly memorable when a performer pulled Burnham out of her seat to dance. Apparently, lunch plans occasionally require flexibility.</p>
<h2>Creativity Away from the Wall</h2>
<p>That playful streak has plenty of company away from client work. Burnham has recently been listening to Hildegard von Blingin’, an artist who reworks modern songs in a Middle Ages style. She makes art with her children using whatever they have available, including an entire weekend devoted to melted-crayon art, and enjoys watching their individual creativity emerge.</p>
<p>Outside, she tends a landscaped garden of perennials and watches for the small creatures that turn up there. A praying mantis has been her favorite sighting. For roughly the past five years, fossil and shark-tooth hunting has also become a favorite family hobby, with Westmoreland State Park their favorite place to go.</p>
<p>There is a common satisfaction running through projects large and small. Asked what reliably improves her day, Burnham points to completion, whether she has organized a room at home or finished a client design. There is pleasure in getting something made and seeing it through.</p>
<p>What she hopes that accumulation of finished work might mean for Culpeper is tied closely to the character of the place that influenced Cwitto in the first place. Five years from now, Burnham would like people to say she added to Culpeper’s charm and helped it hold on to what makes it special.</p>
Early on, we got to know this story through our conversation with Crystal Burnham[1]; that showed us where to look beyond the headline.
<p>It is a fitting ambition for somebody whose process starts by looking not only at a blank surface, but at the businesses, people and street around it. Burnham’s work can take up a mural wall or come close enough to study on a sidewalk sign. And should the right restaurant bathroom ever present itself, she already knows one more wall that could use some lettering.</p>