Artscape Feature
(2010-05-16)
Listen Now:
null
Lance Kagey and Tom Llewellyn of "Beautiful Angle"
Photo by Jennifer Wing / KPLU
With the world moving at a faster pace, a group of artists in the Northwest is pushing back and choosing a slower path. Artists in the Northwest are falling in love with the letterpress. It's a heavy, hand operated piece of equipment that dates back to Johannes Gutenberg and his bible.
Patience, time and an artistic vision are some of the key ingredients that fuel a person's passion for the letterpress. It involves applying ink to a raised surface, usually individual letters that have to be placed by hand making sure they won't end up backwards. Then you put paper on top of the type and apply pressure, so that the image of the letters or a carved drawing ends up on the paper.
 |
| Photo courtesy Jessica Spring |
It's the same process that was used by Johannes Gutenberg 500 years ago to create that famous bible. Today, it seems no one has enough patience, or time, to produce an entire novel this way. But some really incredible things are being made. Beautiful little art books, a few pages long filled with poetry and detailed imagery, fancy wedding invitations and broadsides, or posters.
45 year old Tom Llewellyn is one half of the duo known as "Beautiful Angle".
"This poster says, 'Sharp Ax for Hard Wood, Strong Jaw for Hard Bread, Soft Heart for Hard Times.'"
Llewellyn and his friend Lance Kagey, who's 48, have been creating one poster every month in Kagey's Tacoma basement for 7 1/2 years. This latest one has the simple image of an ax, along with the words Llewellyn just read.
Llewellyn says, "You know it's a bit of hard times we're going through. It a juxtaposition of how we need things that are hard and tough and we need things that are soft."
 |
| Photo courtesy Chris Sharp |
The space they work in is small and packed with sliding drawers, stacked on top of each other that are full of different fonts; letters of the alphabet that come in different shapes. Most of the fonts we select with the click of a button on our computers existed in three dimensions, in shelves like these. Sans Serif, Optima and Helvetica all lived in drawers at one time waiting to be picked up and placed in a letterpress.
The tool that makes it all happen in Kageys's studio is a one thousand pound 1952 challenge type letterpress. Most of the work happens at night. By day, Llewellyn writes advertising copy and Kagey is a graphic designer. At work Kagey has the latest technology at his fingertips.
"And I can do anything on that computer you know. And to some extent it gets to be too much. Letterpress gives you the opposite.The constraints of it. The tactile quality of it. The limitations of it make it more exciting. The problem solving becomes this beautiful puzzle . The cranking of the press is so the antithesis of computer graphics."
Llewellyn says the big puzzle to crack is the search for all of the "stuff" you need to create art on a letterpress that will either draw someone in who likes the hunt, or drive them away in frustration.
 |
| Photo courtesy Jessica Spring and Chandler O'Leary |
"Finding an entire type family that has all of the letters is really difficult, because all of this stuff is sold at curio shops letter by better as little decorations. Everything that goes in between here, all of the spacers that hold it in the bed of type are called furniture. All the stuff between the lines is letting, like on a computer. And all that stuff you have to get."
Llewellyn and Kagey are two of the shining starts of the letterpress movement in the Northwest. For some reason, per-capita, Tacoma is a hot spot for this art form. The Beautiful Angle duo suspects it's the cheap rent for studio space compared to Seattle and Portland.
Not too far away from their shop the skill is being passed onto a whole new generation. At the Elliott Press, on Pacific Lutheran University's Campus, students are hunting for just the right letter they need, or the image they want. The room is a working museum. It's full of old printing equipment. All of the students are making books and posters from scratch. The class is called The Art of the Book and it's a requirement for people studying publishing and graphic design. 27 year old R.J. Adler likes the class so much he's taking it a second time.
"I feel like it's part of the do it yourself trend. When books first came out there was a lot of care that went into it. All the words were either hand set or hand casted and you're losing a lot of that tangibility with all of the modern printing conveniences. People want to get their hands dirty again."
Adler admires the work by Beautiful Angle and is trying his hand at posters.
"I like working with contradictions. On the wall there I printed on maps and I have the image of a bear, but then the words say 'let's all going inside and play where it's safe.'"
Even if you've never heard of a letterpress before, the terms and vocabulary have stayed with us. For example, minding your Ps and Qs. In other words, don't mix them up in the press, because they look the same. The word "Stereotype" comes from printing. It refers to when several plates of identical type were made, so they could be used in different presses at the same time. And "upper case" and "lower case" dates back to the letterpress too. The large letters were stored in the higher shelves and the smaller ones down below.
So, after getting all dirty with the ink and hand crafting unique designs, what happens to the art that's made on these old dinosaurs? It's often sold online, or in specialty shops that sell cards and stationary. And then there are the Beautiful Angle posters. If you're fast, you can nab one for free. Llewellyn and Kagey paste up 90 of them all over Tacoma every month, which is completely against the law.
"It's kind of an odd balance between doing something illegal to the fact that the city has given us awards for community building."
Llewellyn adds, "We got an email two weeks ago from someone who said one of our posters in framed in city hall. Cool, nice to hear!"
Kagey says someday they will have to address the anti postering laws and get them changed. He says they'll use a poster campaign to get the word out.
Jennifer Wing KPLU News.
To listen to the story go to the top of the page.
Here are some links related to the story:
Springtide Press
Beautiful Angle
King's Books Tacoma
© Copyright 2012, KPLU
