Pen to Panel • An Evening of Archives, Conversation, and Lagers
This Saturday is our culminating event, Pen to Panel, with the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. We'll be joined by five wildly creative minds for an hour of conversation about the past, present, and future of handwriting. We are thrilled to be hosting the event at The Sketchbook Project's newly-renovated home, which houses thousands of sketchbooks from around the globe. Below are the brief bios of our panelists, as well as a few links so that you can get a little lost, and find much more. But if you're in town, come see and hear from them in person. Did we mention the beer is on us?
The power in the pen is people, which is why we hosted Pen to Panel. It was our third of three events with The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. Curator of Manuscripts Mary Savig doesn't believe handwriting is a dying art, and we agree, which is how we bonded, and it is which is why we have bonded, and for two months, banded together to help celebrate the launch of their latest anthology, Pen to Paper. We were thrilled to host this culminating event at The Sketchbook Project's newly-renovated home, which is the permanent home of the Brooklyn Art Library and houses thousands of sketchbooks from around the globe. We're in the midst of creating a short film from the event, as we recorded the conversation, but in the meantime, we hope you'll enjoy some of the images from the night, as well as info on the five wild minds that joined us to talk shop.
Info on our Five Panelists:
Mary Savig, Curator of Manuscripts, Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Mary Savig brings to the table years of experience in one of the largest archives today: The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. We first bonded during a snowstorm. It happened to be National Handwriting Day, which is not only the best time to get snowed in, but the best time to write by hand. She doesn't believe that handwriting is a dying art, and we agree, which is why we bonded in the first place, but then banded together to create this collaboration and conversation. She talked about the issues archives face, how they keep the past present, and what steps The Smithsonian is taking to embrace the technologies of the future.
Luis Jaramillo, Author and Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at The New School
Luis Jaramillo is the author of The Doctor’s Wife, winner of the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Contest, an Oprah Book of the Week, and one of NPR’s Best Books of 2012. Plot twist: he writes his drafts by hand. Luis talked about this particular experience, but also the role handwriting plays, in general, in the creative writing process. While this is one of the main reasons we were excited to have Luis on the panel, he also happens to be a part of Handwritten's origin story: the platform was first imagined during a course he co-taught called Writing & Publishing Lab at The New School's MFA Creative Writing Program, where he is currently the director.
Linda Shrewsbury, Creator of CrusiveLogic
We were thrilled to be joined by Founder of CursiveLogic Linda Shrewsbury. They have been one of our "Partners in the Pen" since the beginning. Whenever people say cursive writing is dead or dying, we say no it's not. And then we explain to them CursiveLogic: the patent-pending method for teaching cursive that has literally and figuratively reshaped the way students learn cursive in the classroom. Only two years in, CursiveLogic's future is bright, which is one of the things Linda talked about: the future, and reinvention, of cursive writing in the classroom. In addition to homeschooling her own three children, Linda has been privileged to work as a teacher and a college professor in both private and public institutions. Linda received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her Masters from Oklahoma State University.
Tullis Johnson, Author and Curator of Archives at Burchfield Penney Art Center
Tullis Johnson is the curator and manager of archives at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. He is what we would call a historical surgeon on Burchfield, but what others would call an emerging Burchfield Scholar. Tullis has organized multiple exhibitions of contemporary and historical significance, including the nationally touring exhibition, Charles Burchfield: Weather Event, which received the Award of Commendation at Museums in Conversation from the Museum Association of New York. You can see his exhibition Blistering Vision: Charles E. Burchfield’s Sublime American Landscapes, which is currently on view at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY. Using Burchfield as a portal, Tullis spoke about the necessity of zooming out when we look at the state of handwriting.
Barbara Bash, Calligrapher, Author, Illustrator, Performance Artist, and Teacher
Barbara Bash quintuples as a calligrapher, author, illustrator, performance artist and teacher of the creative process. Her love of the alphabet has taken her back to the study of their early origins in the nature: the writing of the world. She has written and illustrated a number of children’s book about trees, bats, urban birds and most recently, True Nature: An Illustrated Journal of Four Seasons in Solitude, which was completely handwritten except for the bar code. The embodied act of handwriting is one of her core practices for self connection. She is currently creating a book (working title, Leaping Letters) that explores why handwriting still matters. You can understand why we could not contain our wild happiness to have had Barbara on the panel.
Handwriting Continues to Prove Its Nimble Nature • A Conversation with Curator of Manuscripts at Mary Savig
"Technologies of communication, from telegrams to texting, have long threatened the written word. And yet, handwriting continues to prove its nimble nature. The craft of handwriting has flourished online, especially on social media. Artists, thinkers, and makers alike are experimenting with penmanship in innovative ways. Along these lines, the Archives continues to digitize and make our vast handwritten records available online for new generations to discover."
This conversation was a part of our collaboration with The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, Pen to Panel. Here, we talk with Curator of Manuscripts Mary Savig about the creation of their latest anthology, which was the root of our collaboration, Pen to Paper.
SARAH MADGES: I read in the review on the Smithsonian website that the idea for the exhibition and eventually this book came from a discussion amongst colleagues about how easily recognizable A.D. Reinhardt's handwriting is. Are there some other artists whose handwriting you can spot from across the room? Georgia O'Keefe's handwriting is so distinctive!
MARY SAVIG: Yes, Georgia O’Keeffe’s lyrical, bold handwriting shouts for attention and is impossible to forget. Hans Hofmann and Maxfield Parrish also boast distinct penmanship: Hofmann’s handwriting is twiggy but deliberate, and there is no confusing it for another artist’s hand. Parrish’s graceful penmanship doesn’t jump off the page like the others, but its inimitable elegance is as recognizable as his paintings.
SARAH: What factored into your decision about which artists, and their letters, to feature?
MARY: The artist’s handwriting had to intrigue me. It was also important to represent the broad scope and scale of American art, from the nineteenth century through the present, as well as artists from different geographical regions who worked in various media, like sculpture, photography, graphic arts, abstract painting, landscape painting, and crafts. The book includes outsider artists and conceptual artists, feminists and immigrants, and more. As a whole, this selection reflects the depth of resources at the Archives of American Art.
SARAH: In your introduction to the book you talk a lot about the historical development of handwriting in the U.S. Obviously you've researched this topic quite a bit — what was the most surprising or interesting thing you learned?
MARY: Much ink has been spilled on handwriting’s tenuous relationship with technology. “Once upon a time, before there were electronic typewriters, or tape records, or Xerox machines, boys and girls had to write by hand,” began a New York Times article lamenting the current state of penmanship in 1967. Technologies of communication, from telegrams to texting, have long threatened the written word. And yet, handwriting continues to prove its nimble nature. The craft of handwriting has flourished online, especially on social media. Artists, thinkers, and makers alike are experimenting with penmanship in innovative ways. Along these lines, the Archives continues to digitize and make our vast handwritten records available online for new generations to discover.
SARAH: What's your favorite letter in the book?
MARY: Don’t make me choose! My answer really depends on the day and since it’s a sunny Friday morning, I’m thinking of a charming letter by the Reverend Howard Finster. Liza Kirwin, deputy director at the Archives of American Art, writes, “Reverend Howard Finster was a consummate entertainer and an old-timey Bible-belt evangelist. His handwriting, most often in block capitals, was like his preaching — purposeful, emphatic, and an integral part of his art, his “sermons in paint.” This description encapsulates the spirit of the book.
SARAH: Who transcribed all of these letters? The book cites Transcription Center volunteers. How did people tackle the less legible ones?
MARY: Transcription Center volunteers helped with the bulk of transcriptions (a few of the letters had been previously transcribed). The volunteers are especially amazing at deciphering difficult hands. Many of them have compared translation to solving a puzzle: you have to be able to discern whether the faintest line might indicate a dash, a period, or a dotted i, while keeping in mind the bigger picture of the letter because it holds so many context clues.
SARAH: You note that for this book the writers focused on visual content over verbal. Why was it important that they do that? What were you hoping would emerge in the contributors' essays as a result?
MARY: Many of the writers had spent months, often years, in the Archives of American Art scouring these letters for details like the locations of artworks, sale records, notable collaborations, and the like. The goal of this project was to get the writers to step back from the content and instead approach the letter as if it’s a painting or a sculpture. What might the curves, dashes, and density of line tell us about the artist? I was always fascinated and often surprised by the diversity of responses. What emerged from this project is that primary sources, and handwritten letters in particular, remain relevant and poised for interpretation. I hope this book prompts others to look at our materials with a fresh perspective.
Pen to Paper: Artists' Handwritten Letters • A Review by Sarah Madges
"Designed by Princeton Architectural Press, the book operates much like a gallery exhibition, privileging the visual over the verbal so that we may take in the high quality images as art objects before reading the accompanying “wall text” that complements and situates them."
BY SARAH MADGES
Borne from an offhand observation between Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art colleagues about the instant recognizability of minimalist painter A.D. Reinhardt’s handwriting, Pen to Paper: Artists’ Handwritten Letters, inspires reverential curiosity. In this carefully considered book, Curator of Manuscripts Mary Savig regards letter-writing as an art, paying special attention to how each artist addresses formal properties of line and space, as well as what we can infer from these decisions about their creative processes and everyday lives.
Proceeding alphabetically from Bernice Abbott through Grant Wood, and spanning the decades from the 1830s to the 1970s, this thoughtful compendium tells the history of art in America in the words of the artists who shaped it: through correspondences both professional and personal, from negotiations with art collectors and curators to revelations about their art and attendant aspirations.
For this project, Savig sought out curators, professors, historians, artists, and archivists alike to read not just between the lines, but to read into each line, inviting 56 different minds to investigate the interplay between language and art in short essays included alongside each letter. As she explained in an interview with us: the goal was to get the writers (many of whom had previously pored over these manuscripts for citations in art catalogs and dissertations) “to step back from the content and instead approach the letter as if it’s a painting or a sculpture. What might the curves, dashes, and density of line tell us about the artist?”
She hoped that providing examples and interpretations of artists’ handwriting would offer new frameworks for understanding their work — and she was right. “What emerged from this project,” Savig summarized, “is that primary sources, and handwritten letters in particular, remain relevant and poised for interpretation.”
Designed by Princeton Architectural Press, the book operates much like a gallery exhibition, privileging the visual over the verbal so that we may take in the high quality images as art objects before reading the accompanying “wall text” that complements and situates them. While each entry deserves thoughtful consideration, their enigmatic, artistic value may be grasped in a glance, making the collection ripe for paging through at any pace and in any order. Full verbatim transcriptions are included in the back of the book so that readers may experience each letter’s gestalt before delving into character-based, historical, or cultural analysis.
In order to demonstrate just how closely intertwined the written word is with visual art, Savig selected a wide range of artists and traditions. Artists’ idiosyncrasies impress themselves on the page, leaving a tangible trace from which we may draw parallels between artist’s pen, personality, and practice. We see how, in a letter from Howard Finster, sketches of Mount Rushmore-ish busts of important figures punctuate the otherwise breathless string of blocky san serifs, recalling his emphatic speech as a Baptist preacher as well as what he termed his “sermons in paint.” Senior Curator at Smithsonian American Art Museum Eleanor Harvey notes how Frederic Edwin Church’s calligraphic pen strokes echo his brushwork, “in which the rapid back and forth of his brush delineates the contour of a landscape with lyrical flair.”
Seemingly trivial details such as the consistency of letterforms and their organization on the page, or the evident ease or burden with which each letter was composed communicate a surprising amount of personal information as well.
As Savig notes in the book’s introduction: “Artists often code their feelings through handwriting.” We can learn a great deal about the level of affection and familiarity between the letter writer and recipient, the writer’s emotional or professional investment in the contents, and even their current mood. Henry Ossawa Tanner’s anger radiates in his 1914 letter to Eunice Tietjens that responds to an article presuming Tanner’s racial identity and relating it to his success. “Now am I a Negro?” Tanner demands in determined script after a paragraph of underlined phrases, crossouts, and emphasized quotations that undermine that claim. In drafts of a condolence letter written between October 8 and 9, 1968 to Teeny Duchamp just one week after Marcel Duchamp’s death, Joseph Cornell’s handwriting chokes up with ineffable grief. Entire paragraphs are violently slashed out with vertical ink bars, and his script stutters through the recounting of a dream that marks the last time Cornell “saw” Marcel.
Pen to Paper's letters run the gamut from personal chronicles and affectionate notes to philosophical treatises and meditations on the intersection between race, gender, and class in the art world. Some comments are profound, such as Marcel Duchamp’s first utterance of “readymade” to explain his transformation of everyday objects into art to his sister, and others are more banal — “sending this by carrier moose,” Ivan Albright teasingly signs off a letter to Earle Ludgin. In some cases, the letters bear ignorance of their future significance.
When Grant Wood squiggled a frame around an ebullient, red-penciled “Hurray!” at the top of a letter to Zenobia Ness, he couldn’t have known he should be celebrating his imminent fame in addition to the fact that the Art Institute of Chicago decided to hang two of his paintings, including the iconic American Gothic. The parenthetical postscript “(How are you Jackson?)” in Lee Krasner’s aerogram to Jackson Pollock during their trial separation carries chillingly prophetic weight when considering it was likely their last communication before he died in a drunken car crash a few weeks later.
From the whimsical floral doodles surrounding the word “darling” in Rockwell Kent’s letter to his wife Sally to the Asian calligraphy-inspired characters of A.D. Reinhardt, these missives offer extensive proof of the expressive and aesthetic capabilities of handwriting, while engendering a unique familiarity with figures who previously loomed larger than life in our consciousnesses.
By preserving and presenting these ephemera, the book emphasizes process over product, with redactions and insertions of text betraying an artist working through ideas—evidence no longer available in a world dominated by digital modes of communication in which individuality is often obscured by the opacity of typed text. Additionally, the book’s smattering of penmanship styles reflect trends in handwriting, as the ornamental cursive of Thomas Eakins (above), son of a 19th century handwriting instructor, is replaced by the uniform efficiency of the Palmer Method, as seen in Andy Warhol’s comically curt biography offered to the managing editor of Harper’s.
This quiet collection poses a direct challenge to anyone who associates archival materials with must, dust, and irrelevance. The unmistakably human element of handwritten letters elevates what today may be merely cursory communication — an email or text message — to a kind of art that evokes the presence of the person who penned them, and leaves behind a physical relic of the relationship between letter writer, recipient, and the world at large. Appropriately in the book’s introduction, Savig encourages us not to ring the death knell of handwriting. Instead she invites us to “celebrate how imaginative correspondence now exists in material and digital forms,” providing new access and ways of thinking. Pen to Paper is a distillation of that celebration.
Dan Flavin's Art & Life • A Conversation with Tiffany Bell
"It’s concerning that kids growing up today might not be able to read letters, read these manuscripts. Flavin’s early text is so difficult to read, you almost feel shut out. He has all these flourishes, especially the way he ends a word. It’s very sad when this kind of information becomes inaccessible."
SARAH MADGES: How did you get involved with this project?
TIFFANY BELL: I got a call from Mary [Savig] because she noticed my work on the Dan Flavin catalogue raisonné. I make use of the archives on a regular basis and so she asked if I would write about one of Flavin's letters that they had because his writing is so unique.
MADGES: How did you decide which letter to talk about?
BELL: She [Savig] asked me to choose one and I was already familiar with this one because it was available online. I was also interested in it because the content of the letter reflected his handwriting. It describes his interest in 19th century drawings and landscape art, and Ellen [Ellen Johnson, the letter's recipient] had a collection of these John Frederick Kensett drawings.
His handwriting is quite formal considering how innovative his art is. It was interesting to me that it looked so perfect, exactly the way it had been taught to him.
I also knew the artist and knew he took writing seriously; he took serious care...I think he had some idea his letters would be studied at some point. He was interested in the collected writings of Cezanne and would use some of them in lectures. He was very interested in traditional writing like that, capturing the artist's life, and so I thought this letter projected that aspect of his personality.
MADGES: Why do you think archives should be public access? Why are these letters, these archival documents, important?
BELL: It’s invaluable for the kind of research I do. I think archives should absolutely be public access--and there is so much online now, which is so exciting. Even the postmarks on letters tell you where the artist was on a certain date. It’s invaluable for putting together someone’s biography.
But now, with all of these emails exchanged instead--I don't know if or how they will be saved. The quantity of material might be overwhelming to sift through. A lot was done through phone calls, so a lot has been lost there too. My work on Agnes Martin — although not entirely relevant to this conversation — her letters in the Archives of American Art are completely essential as far as learning who people in her circle were, what she thought about her art, and where she would show it. There's no other way to find this information out because she didn't keep a record of anything. Flavin kept his stuff as a record, knowing; he was prepared for people to access his writing.
MADGES: You noted in your essay that Flavin’s art resisted associations with the handmade, and yet he took such care with his penmanship. What were his journal entries like compared to his letters? You said that his letters were copied from what he wrote in his journal--did you notice any edits made between first and second draft?
BELL: His final page has no crossouts, and his letters were often typed. There are more crossouts and edits in his journals. You can really see him working through a thought.
MADGES: A kind of related question here, but what did you learn or what do you think others could learn about Dan Flavin from studying his letters that you couldn’t from biographical record?
BELL: Access to letters gives access and insight into thinking. You get to see how he presents himself to people.
MADGES: Did he write for the duration of his career?
BELL: He started in the 60s--the journals begin in 1961 or ‘62 and he kept them going through the 80s. As a young artist he was very interested in recording what he was doing as an artist. Early letters reach out to people who might be interested in buying or showing his work. I think he already knew Ellen Johnson when he wrote to her--when Flavin made his fluorescent light works they were always untitled, but were often dedicated to people. One of them was dedicated to Ellen Johnson.
MADGES: How do you feel about the fact that the U.S. Core Curriculum no longer requires handwriting instruction?
BELL: I was shocked. I even feel sorrow because I type so much now and I very much miss the way writing by hand connects you to your thought in a different way. When you actually write something down it enhances your ability to think through the idea. The fact that handwriting is slower means you stay with the thought longer.
It’s concerning that kids growing up today might not be able to read letters, read these manuscripts. Flavin’s early text is so difficult to read, you almost feel shut out. He has all these flourishes, especially the way he ends a word. It’s very sad when this kind of information becomes inaccessible.
MADGES: How did working on this project inform or change how you think about handwriting?
BELL: Well first of all, the book is really beautiful. I’m very pleased to be a part of it. It didn’t change how I think, but maybe it reinforced the idea of how wonderful handwritten letters are. Dan Flavin himself understood the beauty and great capacity of what you could convey in a handwritten letter. It’s interesting to look closely at them; you get more sense of personality, occasionally some humor. You can observe how he puts the date and place in each entry and fills the whole page, leaving no margins. He has this very meticulous handwriting that looks angular, even stylized, and always on unlined paper.
MADGES: Do you consider handwriting visual art, writing, or some combination?
BELL: For Flavin, I think it’s a lot like his drawings in some way. He used to carry a notebook around with him all the time and he would use the same pen to sketch. He collected drawings, like he mentioned in the letter: Kensett pieces. Kensett also did ink drawings on paper, often with little notes about where they were drawn and when. Flavin kind of took after him--he recorded the date and time. You can sense the connection to his past art, its influence on him.
Lenore Tawney postcard to Maryette Charlton (1969) • Smithsonian Archives of American Art
FROM THE SMITHSONIAN ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART
Lenore Tawney postcard to Maryette Charlton, February 16, 1969. Maryette Charlton papers. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This letter will be featured in Smithsonian's forthcoming book, Pen to Paper: Artists’ Handwritten Letters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016).
Thank you to Mary Savig, Curator of Manuscripts, for opening up the Smithsonian Archives of American Art for a Handwritten celebration.
Maxfield Parrish letter to Cecilia Beaux, July 11, 1909 • Smithsonian Archives of American Art
FROM THE SMITHSONIAN ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART
Maxfield Parrish letter to Cecilia Beaux, July 11, 1909. Cecilia Beaux papers. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This letter will be featured in Smithsonian's forthcoming book, Pen to Paper: Artists’ Handwritten Letters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016).
Thank you to Mary Savig, Curator of Manuscripts, for opening up the Smithsonian Archives of American Art for a Handwritten celebration.
Eero Saarinen letter to Aline Saarinen, 1953 • Smithsonian Archives of American Art
FROM THE SMITHSONIAN ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART
Eero Saarinen letter to Aline Saarinen, 1953. Aline and Eero Saarinen papers. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This letter will be featured in Smithsonian's forthcoming book, Pen to Paper: Artists’ Handwritten Letters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016).
Thank you to Mary Savig, Curator of Manuscripts, for opening up the Smithsonian Archives of American Art for a Handwritten celebration.
Winslow Homer letter to Thomas B. Clarke, January 4, 1901 • Smithsonian Archives of American Art
FROM THE SMITHSONIAN ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART
Winslow Homer letter to Thomas B. (Thomas Benedict) Clarke, January 4, 1901. Winslow Homer collection. This letter will be featured in Smithsonian's forthcoming book, Pen to Paper: Artists’ Handwritten Letters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016).
Thank you to Mary Savig, Curator of Manuscripts, for opening up the Smithsonian Archives of American Art for a Handwritten celebration.