A Writer's Art: The Alphabet

 Alphabets are a fascination with me.

It might come as a bit of a surprise, as I do not incorporate too much lettering into my work at this point. Calligraphy is an art which I have not the time to practice (though I do practice) and so until I have mastered it enough to make something folky I have chosen to simply work with motifs. For now, my calligraphy dances across the page, and not gracefully. 

That is not to say I do not do letters, though. Ah, yes, thankfully I can do illuminated letters. In fact, they may have started me down the whole fraktur trail. Armed with sharpies, I drew letters on every scrap of paper I could find. I happen to have a few of those scraps, too, so I thought I would share. To the left you will see an example of how I kept sane in school at 13. It appears to be on the back of a recipe for home ec class. (The historian in me notes that we were making Mississippi Mud Cake). 

Letters were my doodles, and with some helpful direction (and a bit of persuasion) from my mother toward frakturs, letters became my art. I do find what opportunities I can among the tulips and the houses to illuminate those strange bits of language that make all the difference. And I am planning to incorporate them even more in the future. 

I find it very apropos that I love letters so much. I am both artist and writer, after all, and so live "in awe of words" (Anonymous). I live in awe of letters both on the tome and the sketchbook page. If you want to see more of the letters that inspire me, check out my Pinterest board devoted solely to letters, called "serif or sans?"  here.

February Sale Note: I will have some new items for sale February 2, 2015 starting at 8pm EST at www.rebekahlsmith.com. I am very excited about these latest pieces, so enjoy! 

In A New Year

We have entered recently into a new year, and I have found it is time to blog again. I am a bit ashamed at my absence from this blog. Being in the last year of my graduate studies, the semester was even more taxing and intense than those before. I have mostly recovered thanks to some time with family and some time to get back to ink and watercolor.  

I feel I must have a little reflection and recap of From Our Hands and Hearts, the November folk art show put together by two of my favorite artists (my mother, Rebekah L. Smith and Lori Ann Corelis). The show was simply amazing. I was grateful to get to meet some of you who have kindly commented here and pinned my art. It was bustling and busy, a whirlwind of activity, with an atmosphere of Christmases past. My work was so graciously received by both the other artists and by those who attended the show. For those who took a piece of mine home, I hope my humble skills have brought a little joy into your house. I am grateful for my family's help, especially my mom in giving me the opportunity to be a part of the show. I am also grateful for my boyfriend, the engineer who bravely forayed into a world unknown (art shows), doing my sales for the day and making an urgent Kelsey-forgot-something-important run. Altogether I had a lovely time and cannot wait to do it again this year!

In the meantime, I will be doing a web show with my mother in February. I do not have a date for it yet, but I will let you all know. To make up for a long silence here, I have included some sneak peeks once again of things you will be seeing on the website come February. Warm wishes to all as we brave the winter, finding joy in our tea, our books, and our art, whatever your art may be. 

Show Sneak Peak!

It has been a crazy few months! I returned to graduate school for my last year (hooray!) and it has been a whirlwind. I apologize for the radio silence, between my internship and my schoolwork I have been a busy lady. If you would like to see what I have been up to, check out the Indiana Historical Society's blog.

Despite the abundance of wonderful museum work I have been doing, I have not forgotten my art. I am excited for the upcoming From Our Hands show on November 15th in Peninsula, Ohio.

Peninsula is a town embedded in my childhood and in my heart. We spent hours in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and my mother used to have a different show in the same venue we will be in for From Our Hands. In those days, my twin sister and I used to sell our own art--the culinary kind--in the form of lemonade and cookies. This year I am selling art once again, but alas cannot sell it with the childhood cuteness my sister and I used to sell most of our wares (cute kids and cookies is a killer combo). So I thought I would give you a sneak peek of what I have been working on this year. Some holiday themed items will be available, and lots of other fun things! Can't wait to see you all there!

I couldn't show you all of the good stuff, but I wanted to give you a few snippets of some of my favorite pieces that will be at the show with me.

A Pen to the Page

I still write letters.

Pens and paper, stamps and envelopes, the whole nine yards.

It’s better than an email. I am grateful for email, as it has made life infinitely easier. But there are some friends, some family, for whom an email cannot tell the whole story. The ink on the page says as much as the words that it forms. The page itself, once in your hands, gets placed in another’s, and there is an authenticity about it.

We are a culture which loves the authentic. Abraham Lincoln’s slippers, George Washington’s tea set—why do we obsess over these?

Because we value the touch of a human hand more than the object that is touched. Slippers are slippers until someone important, someone long ago, or someone we loved held them and wore them and loved how comfortable they were.

In this way, it is like getting a hug, or feeling the comforting touch of a hand to my shoulder when I find a treasured letter in my mailbox. It takes time to sit down and write to someone. It takes time to stamp it and send it off. Our culture values that time, and so it becomes so much more meaningful when someone stops their busyness to mail a letter.

This is why I wanted to design fraktur cards in the first place. I still love handwritten notes, and when a letter is in an interesting card it becomes that much more special. I hope you enjoy using these cards to send a little bit of comfort and care to someone you love. See them here.

Dipping Into the Past

You can see the depth of color the ink provides on the paper, especially in the dots.

I recently decided to be more historic by using a dip pen to draw my frakturs. Dip pens are inconvenient, messy and difficult to use. So why would I torture myself, you ask? Well, I actually enjoy it. More importantly, the look this medium creates is beautiful. The depth of color achieved by letting the ink seep into the page gives a more permanent look. The lines look etched into the page, not simply drawn on. The ink runs a little as it soaks into the paper, and the final product looks so much older than I could have anticipated. 

The old tools and the new, looking down on a work in progress. 

 I would love to say I cut my own nibs (pen tips) from a feather and dip it into a nice old well full of ink I made by crushing berries and other various and sundry items. The historian in me desires historical accuracy in all things historic. My sanity, on the other hand, desires other things. And so, in an effort not to send my already overworked brain over the edge, I have conceded to use a modern plastic handle, metal nibs, and store-bought ink. 

Though I have made these concessions, the process is hardly less adventurous. After working with a dip pen and ink I begin to look less than beautiful. Like I described with the paper, the ink runs down the pen and soaks into skin. It also stays on the surface, allowing me more opportunities to smudge it with my hands and arms. Sometimes the pen gets a life of its own, and drops ink wherever it would like on the page. This is usually remedied by adding polka dots to the rest of the fraktur to disguise the accidental spot.

Finished piece using a dip pen to outline

To me, the unpredictability of the ink is what makes the piece unique and a bit more folky. Why let a mistake get to you? Making it work in the design is half the fun, adding an extra challenge to my task. My lines might not be exactly straight, and I may have smudged this leaf over there. But that's what folk art is about: making the most of the materials and talent you have, and aiming toward something lovely, not necessarily perfect. And so, charming mistakes and all, my frakturs come to life. The color runs deep and adds a touch of the past to the present day.


"Ring the bell that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in." ~Leonard Cohen

  

The Perils of Preparation

Tomorrow I will be at an event called Historic Art in Historic Places, a series of workshops held in conjunction with the Peninsula Foundation. The Foundation is dedicated to preserving Peninsula’s history and sharing it with the public. My mother, Rebekah L. Smith, along with several other talented ladies in textiles, will be doing the workshops tomorrow. I am here.

always excited about events that promote folk art and museums. You can find out more information

Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with frakturs, as textiles and frakturs are quite unrelated as far as media goes. I do not get along well with sewing machines or string (as you will see in a coming paragraph). So no, I am not taking the workshop. I’m working it. The store, that is. These lovely ladies will be selling a few things along with teaching, and I will be manning the store and selling a few things of my own.

Preparing for this event has been, if nothing else, chaotic. Mom’s process seems so effortless. I do hope some of her grace comes with age. There is wool spread across tables in neat little piles, and copies in neat stacks. I have a pile of string and paper tangled in a box overflowing with more paper. It is not like I am taking a booth full of stuff, you see, and yet the preparation seems to have consumed a great deal of my time.

It all began at the printer. I took my little flash drive up to the counter and asked for assistance. The lady assisting me, after a quiet greeting, waved and grunted at me to move to the computer. Her Neanderthal walk took several minutes. I learned after several more minutes of going round and round that she did not understand what “off-white cardstock” actually looked like. Thankfully the prints came out well on a nice ivory and mostly correct. When I went back later, they could not find my order because it was filed under my first name.

Now, again, I must remind you, I am not bringing a car-load of frakturs. That would be a terrifying ordeal in itself, but I am not even bringing more than one little box of items to sell. It is the small ones that cause the most trouble apparently. Literally, the smallest items I am bringing have wrought the most frustration.

I decided in a moment of insanity to do some very tiny frakturs in some very tiny frames to make into necklaces. The tiny fraktur part was most enjoyable, as I love minute details and very skinny pens. It was the assembly process that got me all tangled. This is where the string makes its stage debut. There is some old saying about measuring twice and cutting four times, or is it measure five times and cut twice? Whatever it is, it is supposed to be wise and useful. I did not go that route. I measured once, which is the root of the problem. Somewhere between the measuring and cutting the inches shrunk and I ended up with necklaces that can’t fit over your head.

But, after some burnt chicken (which occurred during the string fiasco) and several other mishaps, I think I am ready to go! I am looking forward to what preparation for the From Our Hands and Hearts show in November will be like… Hopefully less perilous, and more productive. 

A Website for Mom, A Webpage for Me

A past fraktur.

I really enjoy graphic design. I think it’s why I so love frakturs. A combination of letters and words, more stylistic than realistic. I have never taken a class on design, but I have read a great deal. I try to keep up with what's new in design, and I have several boards on Pinterest devoted to design for inspiration. It often influences all of my art, and comes in handy when something like a flyer, a business card, or a website needs designed. 

The website has been my latest project. My mother, Rebekah L. Smith, has been working on getting together a website for her work. My job was to design the site. I am not a coder, and do not plan on ever being one. When my dad found Wix, a site that allows you to design your own website without coding, we were thrilled. I was able to design the website basically from scratch without ever even seeing code. Click and drag, that is much more my style. They have great templates, all of which can be easily adjusted or used as a blank slate for your own design. 

My page on Rebekah L. Smith's website, designed by me.

When we set out to design her website, we decided on a very neutral palette to highlight the colors in her work. I did a lot more tweaking than the average person might do as far as layout and color to give it a very unique feel, one that went with Rebekah’s work. We have been quite pleased with the result, which you can see here: www.rebekahlsmith.com.

A fraktur for sale.

My mother has graciously allowed me to put a page on her website. I have my information and a gallery of past work, as well as a place on the store page. We will continue to put more pieces up as they become available. I am currently selling original frakturs, bookplates and notecards. Check it out when you have a chance! http://www.rebekahlsmith.com/#!frakturs-by-kas-/c1p4q