Paula Scher and Type!

Another artist/design whose work I admire for its alive-ness is Paula Scher. I recently heard her speak on a small panel about design, at the Museum of Art and Design here in NYC, that was put on by Slate Magazine. This was the first time I'd heard Paula Scher speak, and her articulate contributions to the discussion made me want to research her more. But I already knew I loved her work from seeing a print of a painting of hers, in which she ILLUSTRATED the New York map with subways and streets and neighborhood names. I'd never seen a map so infused with personality, life, humor and voice.



I was once told that one should think about type as a voice-- that choosing the type is like choosing the voice of a character. One can ask: how do I want the content of the words that I'm type-setting to sound? You can walk around reading signage on the street, and experiment with saying it out loud (at least in NYC) in the voice you conjure up from the forms of the letters. What I love about Paula Scher's maps is they are so full of 'characters' that they feel populated, alive, and noisy.

Here's a detail of her map of China that, to me, beautifully communicates the population density and the infinite voices that I imagine to be crowded amongst each other there:

And one more, of Florida, where the type is practically in motion, animated and swirling in the water... brilliant!


So while I was aware of Paula Scher's maps, I didn't realize that I've been living amongst her type all over the citi-- even right near the museum where I heard her talk, there's a Citibank around the corner, and Jazz at Lincoln center across the circle of Columbus Circle. She is everywhere, and how awesome is that?

I found this video produced by Adobe, where Paula Scher speaks frankly about her development in her use of type, and her design process. (Click where it says "Launch video".)

Paula Scher also gives a talk on TED
in which she uses the terms "serious" and "solemn" to contrast approaches that we can choose to take when we are faced with solving a (design) problem. I appreciate that she did the work of addressing this difference, and that she shared her discoveries.

After all this recent learning from Paula Scher, I became zesty about type too, and I started taking photos of appealing letter forms...hopefully soon I will start creating some too.

Maira Kalman on the Inauguration

A few days ago, Maira Kalman contributed her take on President Barack Obama's inauguration, as an eyewitness illustrator-writer-poet. It is beautiful! Maira Kalman chronicles her journey to and in D.C. through the sites that struck her eyes and soul. I love the immediacy with which she records and translates her perceptions- her art and words are direct, honest, and feel like they come from an open heart and mind. While they are not photographs, they have a quality to them that brings to mind the words of Photographer Walker Evans: “Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.”
We all saw this next image broadcast on TV or the internet, and had feelings about it-- I mentioned it in my previous entry, but Maira Kalman's version, by virtue of that she spent time with it, re-creating it in paint, says more. To me, this image is saying "I was there, watching this too! and so was this tree! and the sky! and this our feeling about it."

In this series, Maira Kalman pays attention to both nature and human culture, with a celebratory curiosity. Another artist whom I have admired and loved for many years, for a similar kind of seeing is Alice Neel. I will write about Alice Neel in her own entry, but had to tie her in here, because I get an Alice Neel feeling from some of the more directly observational pieces in Kalman's Inauguration series.


It's very touching to me how Maira Kalman chose the subjects the details of her Inauguration Adventure to communicate the excitement, joy and liberation that she felt in this event. She took us on a tour of her experience, but has tapped into the creativity of the people (historic and present) and the natural world that she felt were vibrating with the spirit of the day.
In this series and in her work in editorial illustration and children's books, Maira Kalman gives her audience a 'hit' of her tremendous creative life-force, which gives us all permission to create and be alive along similar lines-- it's as if she is sharing a deep-rooted language of creativity which we can all tap into if we would allow it. I believe it is for this, her smarts, humor, skill and wisdom, that Maira Kalman is a much-beloved artist/author in today's world. Thank you Maira!

Hooray!

Hooray for our 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama!! Hooray for everyone who helped him become the person he is, and who helped him to get to where he got to today! And Hooray George W. Bush, for flying away, off into the blue sky.

Goodbye George W. Bush

To celebrate the end of this 8-year disaster, I wanted to look back at some of the Bush illustrations I created over the years. Above is a portrait from a series I painted of all of the U.S. Presidents. (I am very excited to paint the next one...)

And below are some of the Bush illustrations I made for the Seattle Weekly Newspaper. When looking through my archive, I have drawings of Bush growing a Pinnochio nose, chopping down trees, riding a nuclear missile, and driving a wrecking ball through a group of senior citizens.

Here is a more harmonious piece:



And here's a hopeful one that came right before the 2004 election:


And finally, an illustration of what we should have been able to do to stop this at some point:



Creating politically-charged editorial illustration is a challenge-- how can the grey areas and complexities of any issue be addressed in a single image that needs to 'read' quickly? With the Seattle Weekly, I was lucky to be partnered with writer Geov Parrish, who was well-informed, but also wrote to the extreme to get his readers to react. Illustrating his column for a few years, I had the opportunity to engage in this challenge every week, and eventually get more comfortable with it. George Bush was a regular subject in this column, and for all the bad that he spread around, I have to say that I really enjoyed drawing him.

PostIt

Hello to the Post It Show III, which is still up at LA's Giant Robot Gallery. I was happy to be part of this show (under my pseudonym, Nina Frankel), along with hundreds of other artists. Making work for this show, I was guided by the PostIt's low-key-ness, which got me into an art-making process which went something like this: have an idea, grab a PostIt, try it out... while working on that image, get another idea, grab another PostIt, start that idea, an on, and on. I'd soon have about 20 PostIts gestating together on my desk. Then I would look to sort out which were not worth pursuing and which had possibility. From every batch of 20, there would be two or three that seemed they would make it to full fruition. In the end, I sent off 24 to the show, and have a big stack of rejects to keep for future inspection-- maybe these will serve as good ideas for later, and maybe they need to be recycled.

Here a survivor, that made the trip out to LA for the show:

Hungarians in OuterSpace

I'm grateful to Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson for curating this show and giving so many of us this nudge to experiment and produce. And thank you to the PostIt, for being a liberator of ideas and a receptacle for creativity.

Sculpey 2009

This is the New Year email card I sent out to friends and clients this year, and I thought I'd put it up on this blog to start the new year off with a little Sculpey.

Sculpey is my 'recreational' art form-- I have been working with it for about 12 years, and find it very fun. The best are the colors that you can mix-- it's such a good feeling to take chunks of raw Sculpey, mix them in your hands, and see a new color emerge. For anyone who mixes paint, this is an exciting tactile experience! It's also satisfying to me mix subtle or moody colors out of the very bright raw materials.

These Sculpey lions were made for two people whom I love and admire very much, to stand by and watch over them during cancer treatment. The one in the background was named "Chemo-sabie" by its recipient, and one in the foreground was named "Chemo-simba", as a brilliant riff on the other one's name, by its recipient.

I love creating characters in 3D, and while I haven't yet used Sculpey for any stop-motion animation work, one of my hopes for 2009 is to make that happen.
(Here's a link to my stop-motion heroes, Aardman.)

There is a good resource on the Sculpey site, called Sculpey 101 which I recommend checking out. To supplement, here are some things that I have learned from using Sculpey over the years:

-While Sculpey is non-toxic, I suggest getting a dedicated toaster oven from a garage sale for baking it, and not using your kitchen oven. Also too, you can get a mini-pyrex casserole dish for the oven's tray, to use instead of the metal one that might come with.

-Always underbake your Sculpey-- I find that when you bake it until it is brittle, it will break that much sooner. Take your Sculpey out of the oven before you think it is done. It will continue to bake/harden after you remove it, with the heat it has taken in.

-If your Sculpey creation is to stand, make sure you place it as you want it to stand, on the baking tray.

-You can coat your Sculpey with clear nail polish, or Sculpey brand's clear fixative.
This does seem to make the pieces last longer. I haven't discovered a matte finish, but am sure there are products out there.

-If you are mailing Sculpey to a friend, go overboard with packing. There is nothing sadder than your recipient telling you they opened your package only to discover your loving gift, dismembered.

-And finally, if you are an artist who is used to 2D, I highly recommend getting yourself some Sculpey for exploring the next dimension. I now bring Sculpey to my Animation class at Parsons- once the students have settled on their character designs in their sketchbooks, we make them in Sculpey. This process is valuable for getting to know their characters even more, and then they have a little pal to place next to the Computer for inspiration, when working.

Happy Holidays! 1950

Last month, while digging through my parents' stuff in preparation for a move, I discovered some family treasures about which I will be writing in the new year. One surprise finding was this pair of holiday cards made by my grandfather Albert Kner, in 1950. They are paper collage, done in a style that I hadn't quite seen from my grandfather before. In fact, they are in a style that I have embraced: simple and bold shapes. Needless to say, I was excited and touched to find these and to feel this connection. I love the playfulness with which my grandfather chose the different papers and textures for these two images-- the velvet for Santa's suit, the gauze for the clouds, the silver for the wings of the angle.



Inside these cards, printed in letterpress green letters, it reads: "Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year from the Kners *1950*". I don't know how many of these my grandfather would have made and sent out at the time, but I can imagine him very methodically printing the inside text, methodically cutting out all of the illustrative elements for the covers in multiples, and then methodically affixing them.

The colors of these cards, 58 years later, is bright and alive.