WordWacky

I can’t say enough good things about 20×200, a project begun and expertly curated by Jen Bekman. Every Tuesday and Wednesday a new, limited edition print goes up for sale online. Prices start at $20 for one of 200 8″x10″ prints. The prints are beautiful, and the price is entry-level enough that even unemployed schlubs like me can afford the occasional art splurge. For those of us with gainful employment, there are larger, even more limited edition prints, too.

I couldn’t help but love today’s offering by Lauren Dicioccio: Vogue JUL07:pg145 (Ripeness is All). From the artist’s blurb:

“Fashion magazines are the source materials for my series color codification dot drawings. I make each piece on a sheet of frosted mylar laid over a magazine page. After assigning a color to every letter in the alphabet (numbers are in grayscale, 0=white and 9=black), I apply tiny dots of paint over every character on the page. Each drawing I make has a different color codification, and therefore a different palette.”

Read more about 20×200. Or just go buy the print before it sells out (only 56 of the small ones left at this writing).

Rarely am I treated to a new idea in the world of words. There’s something reminiscent of the refrigerator poetry that was so popular a decade ago, but somehow this is way cooler.

Here’s the latest in the series of Newspaper Blackout Poems by Austin Kleon:

There’s also a book coming out, so go preorder it. (Via @splintergen)

There’s a family story about my cousins’ first visit to New York. After having taken a few subway rides, the kids were ushered into a brand new subway car, clean and gleaming in its stainless steel perfection. One cousin spoke up: “How come this one doesn’t have pictures?”

You do get used to the sight of graffiti on New York City subways. These days the cars are all graffiti-repellant, but there is still opportunity, and in New York, there is no such thing as an opportunity not taken.

At Written on the City, people post photos of interesting graffiti by the city in which it’s drawn:

And at Pictures of Walls,  there are both wordy walls, such as these, and artsy walls:

And I guess I did, too, though only until about age six, by which time I was entirely too worldly and jaded to buy in anymore. But my mother could be found watching his show, even in adulthood. I know, strange, but he still makes me cry.

Apparently, Mr. Rogers wrote all his own songs, including “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” the subject of this lovely anecdote:

Once while rushing to a New York meeting, there were no cabs available, so Rogers and one of his colleagues hopped on the subway. Esquire reported that the car was filled with people, and they assumed they wouldn’t be noticed.

But when the crowd spotted Rogers, they all simultaneously burst into song, chanting “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.” The result made Rogers smile wide.

Read all of the 15 Reasons Mr. Rogers Was the Best Neighbor Ever at CNN.

Mom, Mr. Rogers, I miss you both.

As a writer, when I call myself an artist, it is always with the suspicion that someone behind me might tap me on the shoulder to remind me, “Um, no, you’re not an artist. You’re just a writer.”

Perhaps visual artists — maybe painters in particular — feel ordinary, old school, unoriginal. They are not bursting from a canvas wearing a bloody apron and a half-burned tutu. Nor are they installing six-foot View Masters that revolve with the pull of a slot machine arm. Flat, bulky, tangible things they create to hang on walls, so much decor.

But to me, visual artists — maybe painters in particular — are the quintessential artists. So when they take their medium and blend it with my own, I’m enthralled. I noticed recently that, coincidentally or not, most of the original paintings in my home have words somewhere in the picture. That I didn’t buy it all myself makes it an even more compelling fact.

Today I visited my friend, Kathryn Daily’s studio in the International District for an open studio event. I love Kathryn’s work, so it was a joy to see what she’s doing. There were many other terrific artists there, with all their wine and cheese and equipment — including a letterpress that I got to work myself!

I was most taken by the work of Edward Ancher Nelson, particularly his watercolors of groups of people. The image is an example of the many on display in his studio and in the hallways of the building. One slim painting traversed the length of the staircase, with myriad portraits of people and their characteristics, fading into the horizon line at the bottom of the stairs. “Scatalogical.” “Cat-like.” “Self-Involved.”

Nothing puts me at a loss for words like a painting. I blame my inadequate art history education for not being able to describe what I like about a work of art. Sure, as I said, I love words in art, but that isn’t all that appeals to me about his work. There’s a feeling of both individual importance and anonymity that Nelson’s paintings create. We are only one character, one trait, one moment, and we are together, standing out and blending in all at once. Next to each other one trait shines brightly, while anything else we may be is eclipsed.

And maybe that’s not it at all.

I talked to one artist in her studio about how difficult it is to know where to begin with visual art. For me, that’s usually not the case with writing. Yet I wouldn’t say writing comes easily, either. It comes slowly, not without pain, and with a tremendous deliberation, analysis, and unending correction. I imagine the painter throwing his or her soul against the canvas, using technique only as a lens. The creation is already there in the mind. Perhaps that’s not how it is.

But for my writing, every moment feels precarious, uncharted. Every word, as it appears on the page, means crap. Crap, crapping crappiest crapness. And later, when I look it over again, sometimes it means more. Sometimes not.

How pedestrian, how droll to trade in meanings, line my ideas up and assassinate them with periods at the end of every sentence. How boring to explain. Quick, someone give me a canvas, and a clue where to begin. There’s a soul here in need of throwing.

Here’s a graphic of the top 300 most common words in this blog, as of yesterday.

Make one of your own at Wordle. [via Bombast and Thunder]

Last week my wife Ami and I went to the First Thursday Artwalk in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. We saw a terrific letterpress exhibit at the Design Commission, a tribute to Chris Stern.

From Easily Amused:

Chris and his wife and partner, Jules Remedios Faye, formed Stern & Faye, Letterpress Printers, and founded their “printing farm” in the Skagit Valley north of Seattle. Each of them was a fine, and unusual, printer and artist before they met, and their work together has been amazing. When Chris died of cancer a year and a half ago, many of us lost a friend and we all lost an original talent.

The exhibit featured a number of artists’ letterpress works — Ami and I bought two postcard-sized pieces — and a real working letterpress!



Here are a few of the letterpress creations we saw:



Anyone got a letterpress they want to sell me — or better yet, give me?

Check out this cool furniture.

At nearly 2,000 Euros apiece, this photo is as close as I’ll come to owning any. But it’s a great idea, and a great execution. [via If It's Hip It's Here]