Sending text the old-fashioned way

There is still a little bit of blue paint dried under my fingernails after last night’s Artist Salon #4, part of a series of casual, but provocative, artist get-togethers at Joey Veltkamp’s studio on the Seattle University campus.

When I arrived last night at 5:00 p.m., guest artist Erin Shafkind invited me to grab a drawing pad and draw one of the other attendees who were also waiting for the night’s activities to begin. Elizabeth, sitting next to me, sketched Troy. Klara drew Max.  I drew Erin’s feet. And Erin drew me.  Everyone pinned their sketches to a wall, almost completely covered in sketches of people who attended previous salons.

On the other side of that wall, I would later learn, was the evidence of the last salon exercise: large holes hammered and kicked through the old drywall (now covered on the front  with new drywall) and spray painted around the edges. The artists had turned the wall into a giant stencil, making prints on paper by painting through the negative-space created by their cathartic destruction.

Our exercise was a little bit calmer.

Erin posed a question: when was the last time you physically wrote a letter?

The point being: most of us — through email, text messaging and web chatting — keep very busy every day, using a variety of keyboards, both big and small — real and virtual.  And we’ve trained ourselves pretty efficiently (my father’s “search and destroy” typing method not withstanding) to perform particular motions in order to use those tools properly. Think of the distinctive iPhone “finger splits” sweep. Or the manic, subconscious spidery stroke of your fingers when you type an irritated-but-diplomatic work email (not to say I have ever had cause to write such a thing).

Erin made the point that despite these prolific motions and interactions we make with our hands, we never actually make anything.  We do, in a metaphorical sign/signifier way — through typing, writers write, forms fill, emails talk back. But, seen from a visual artist’s perspective, nothing is being created in all this frantic motion and output of energy.  The use of technology does not leave a lasting mark.

Until now.

Erin set up three stations for us: cardboard cutouts in the shape of iPhones, upon which we traced the distinctive iPhone gestures with paint on our fingers. Keyboards turned into stamps (a.k.a "Internet of the Soul"). And Wooden phones (examples shown below), upon which we hand-wrote text messages (a bit of a misnomer if you take it out of the context of phone technology, now that I think about it).  These, we were instructed, are to be passed on physically — and hopefully perpetually with their journey tracked here. 

Photo by Joey Veltkamp

Employing finger-paint (essentially), markers, stamps and pens to explore what the physical mark of my techno-training looks like in real-live color was perhaps the most relaxing thing I have done in weeks. It’s easy to forget how playing with a bit of paint, getting my hands dirty or just dragging a pen across a piece of paper can make me a little more centered, perhaps because it forces me to slow down and not operate on autopilot.

I encourage any and all to participate in the next Salon (details forthcoming on Joey Veltkamp’s blog). At the very least, you'll make good friends there.