By Crissy Pascual, Audrey Atiyeh

How did you get started as an artist?

I knew I wanted to draw for a living. I spent two years at Sonoma State doing fine art and getting my GE (general education) and then three years at Cal Poly. 

Artists seem to hate graphic designers. It’s like they’re giving up and selling out and doing logos for corporations. But that’s what I wanted to do! I think it’s cool. Going into a store and seeing your thing on a shelf – that’s awesome. At Cal Poly, it was all about, “How are you going to make money with your art? How are you going to turn your art into food?”

I worked at a big PR firm in San Francisco (Burson-Marsteller, now called Burson) for seven years, then went out on my own for 30 years. 

What were some of the highlights of your career?

I got hired to do some work for Paul McCartney. I’m a big fan, and when I was on break from Cal Poly I did a big poster with 75 of his song titles all illustrated out. A friend told me that Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney were filming a video in the Solvang area and another friend gave me an NBC jacket so I could look like I was part of the crew and I was like, “I’m gonna walk around the set and I’m gonna see McCartney and we’re gonna be friends.”

He pulled up in a gold Corvette and I was super calm and I said, “Hey, I did this poster.” And he said he would check it out when he got back to London. And a couple months later I get a letter saying how Paul is excited to meet me and he’s going to publish a poster of my thing. 

Years later, I was in New York City and I stopped by his office and talked to his secretary and I said, “Hey, Paul and I go waaay back.” And she said, “Well, we have some projects.” So they gave me their moving announcement project when they were moving their offices. 

How did you come up with the Christmas tree ornaments?

I wanted to help Katherine Rinehart to raise money to get the neon chick sign restored. What could I do? How can art make a difference? I do like paintings but people just put them on the wall and they just sit there. I’ve always liked commercial art better. It just works harder. It sells salad dressing or it helps restore a neon sign. 

All the Petaluma signs – there’s so much public art like that where I get off on the design of it all. That Pinky’s sign is so cool. And the Buckhorn sign is so cool. And the Hideaway sign is so cool. It’s all this stuff that makes Petaluma Petaluma and there aren’t a lot of towns in the Bay Area that have so many visual icons like that. They’re so old but that’s what makes them so cool. 

These funky ornaments – they’re handmade and they’re goofy. It’s hard because I want them to look consistent, like they're almost machine-made. But there’s no robots involved.

Speaking of old, tell me about your family’s long history in Petaluma and your novel, “The Dunnes of Brittas: An Irish Family’s Saga of Endurance.”

When my daughter was born I got into genealogy. I had all these letters from Ireland. I had this aunt who had written all this stuff down. I got to go back to Ireland and see that. I had no intention of writing a book but I kept finding all these stories and I’d go to my wife Judee, “You won’t believe this!” And she’d say, “If you tell me one more goddamn story about a dead ancestor, I’m gonna hit you with a frying pan.” It took years of research but I wrote it during COVID. 

Patrick Lawler (Akers’ great-great grandfather) came here in 1857 and he bought a house from General Vallejo. My grandmother’s father was John Lawler and he built this house we are in for my grandmother as a wedding present. My dad was born in the kitchen on the table. This house was designed by Brainerd Jones. 

It’s all original structure. We moved back here from Sunnyvale in 1976 when I was in junior high. We’ve added on and recently renovated. 

What is something that most people don’t know about you?

The first concert that I ever saw was Elvis in Las Vegas. I was 11. I drew a picture of Elvis and my dad gave it to the front office and then a month later, an envelope came from the Las Vegas Hilton and it had my drawing that Elvis signed, “To Kevin from Elvis.”

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.