Typewriter Art

In 1998, a friend introduced me to the manual typewriter. I was instantly enchanted with the machine and typed, “How do we get there?” I didn’t know then that the question would be so poignant. It was the beginning of an exciting journey of creative exploration. We set the typewriter up with a stack of 8” x 10” paper in the shared kitchen space of the building where I lived. The typewriter was accessed by seven tenants and any of their friends. It seemed that someone was always coming and going at all hours of day and night as there was often a new entry to the running feed. It was like facebook before facebook existed.

I enjoyed the community involvement with the machine and longed to type on it for hours. So I thought it would be polite to purchase my own. I made a visit to a local antique store and found a lovely Remington typewriter. On my new manual, I started typing on anything I could fit into the platen. Papers of all kinds and sizes were used, also fabrics, photos, and leaves. I loved the connection of the striking print with the pressing of the keys, the sound and rhythm it would make, and the long history and purpose of the machine. For the first few years I was freestyle writing and because I was exploring so many mediums of different textures, thicknesses, colors and sizes to type on, as well as so many different ways to make marks, I developed an organic quality to typing. I really enjoyed pushing that organic approach within a seemingly rigid machine to see how my words could tell a story with form, tone, spacing. My explorations were not limited to the tactile processes. They included the growth of my creative intentions. The idea of wanting to branch  my expression in image instead of words was the birth of my typewriter art body of work. It lead me to choosing two characters, the upper and lower case ‘O’ and the period. For two reasons, it was for both presentation and symbolism. These two characters without other letters could easily be read as circles and dots which would create a visual poetry not to be read as language but as image. Also the circle and dot are both full and void at the same time and represent the continuous rolling cycle of beginning and ending.

This body of work continues to develop as a growing organic exploration of a visual expression paired with a literate machine. Each piece of my typewriter art is typed on a typewriter. The paper is fed through the carriage, often many times over and over, sometimes through more than one typewriter. It is often a meticulous process of type then shift paper, type then shift paper, etc. I began collecting typewriters for their different typing qualities soon after my first typer encounter. My collection grew as large as approximately 100 typewriters which I have edited down through the years to about 25 of my favorite functioning machines. They all have a unique experience of marking and moving of papers that relate to creating the art and I really like the different fonts. My first show of typewriter art was in 2004 and I have been exploring the typewriter and making typewriter art ever since.