The Buzz

Recently I have been making molds of old letterpress type. I wanted to say something about words, letters and speech, and remembered seeing discarded letterpress type scattered on the ground at Colonial Williamsburg. I wondered if the Print Shop there had a "hellbox" of discarded type, but they did not. Instead I was directed to look on Ebay by a young woman in period clothing. Somehow this didn't seem strange at all.

I purchased a set of wooden letterpress type of various sizes, as well as a complete set of tiny Copperplate. I also found some old hymn plates. I have no idea what I will do with those at this point but they were too good to pass up. In any case, I made impressions of the type using my gel medium method. I have found that the wooden type makes the best casts. The Copperplate, at font 6, is much too small to be seen through this method. but I have other ideas for its use.

This little painting is the first to be made with the new molds. It also features the impression of a fragment of a small paper wasp's nest. I used this because it was a repetitive and modular shape, like the Copperplate type which underlies the entire painting, but I soon also realized that the "buzz" of a bee or wasp could also be the "buzz" of news, or ideas. The outline of a human ear listens to the sound and tiny Cowrie shells line the edges of other letter forms crowding in from the right.

Acrylic on paper with glass beads and Cowrie shells. 10 x 19 cm.