October 1 - 2 - 3s
Collage, breasts and visual archives are all found within.
I’m back and recommitted to bringing you my month in collections of things in an effort to distract myself from the election results. This month (please ignore that it is now November), I’m bringing you a design process that has led to new logos for my freelance graphic design practice and this newsletter, visual archives and some personal projects.
1 New(ish) Process
While I was recovering from top surgery (see below!), my friend texted me to ask if I would consider designing the invitation to her 30th birthday party. Itching to get back to design but not ready to sit at a laptop, I remembered my friend’s love for Matisse and experimented with vegetable paper-cuts:
Being cut up led me to cutting other things up? Something like that.
This led to me using paper for more and more of my design pieces, including my new logo, and the new logo for the 1-2-3s:
I also used paper-cutting as a method for designing abstract Japanese woodblock printmaking which I am currently teaching myself. I’m using Laura Boswell’s Making Japanese Woodblock Prints, which I purchased at Dulwich Picture Gallery when I went to see Helen Frankenthaler’s breathtaking woodcuts - the show that inspired me to get into printmaking.
2 Fewer Tits
For the first time ever in the short history of the 1-2-3s, I present something lacking rather than something present: I got top surgery!
As a recovery craft, I knitted myself a lime green sleeveless jumper, and learned needlepoint. The fact that I accidentally chose a visual reference for the needlepoint that looked like a nipple being removed was not lost on me:
Kaffe Fassett’s Glorious Inspirations helped me learn how to create needlepoint designs from references from art history. The image reference was taken from a detail from a Dutch still-life by Willem Claez. Heda, Still Life with Glasses and Tobacco, that I saw in 2022 at the Boston MFA:
Dissected breasts started appearing everywhere I looked. In August, I started to read Carolyn Burke’s biography of Lee Miller. I am obsessed with this detail:
Against his inclination, Man [Ray] encouraged Lee [Miller] to find her own path. He sent her to work for firms that wanted a Man Ray but would accept the work of Madame. Among the most bizarre assignments he gave her was the stint as a photographer at the Sorbonne medical school, a job that appealed to her love of the macabre. One day Lee walked from the Left Bank operating theatre to Frogue [French Vogue] headquarters carrying a breast on a dinner plate, covered by a cloth. Having retrieved it from a mastectomy with the intention of taking a picture, she placed a knife and fork on either side, then added salt and pepper shakers to this morbid still life, a true nature morte.
And here is the photo:
I do feel like NYU could have made better use of my severed breasts than the medical waste they probably ended up in. My next project is to create a kind of top surgery votive using screen printing: watch this space!
3 Visual Reference Archives
Every good artist and designer needs at hand an arsenal of archival material to use as references. I know that knowing my art and design history helps me be a better designer. So here are a couple of my favourites:
Present and Correct Blog
The blog portion of a London stationery store presents fortnightly collections of book illustrations, food packaging and retro branding, among others.
Public Work
An archive of public domain images by Pinterest-alternative Cosmos.
New York Found Type
Is it cheeky to include your own visual archive? As you may well know, I’ve been collecting New York found type since I arrived here in 2022. I include anything found in New York, and generally try to focus on typography only found in New York: moving vans, laundromats, subway signs, door numbers, painted signs and shopfronts, among others.
I started a new Instagram for the archive rather than posting to my personal account, but it’s not quite working as a platform for me. If anyone has any alternative suggestions for where the New York Found Type archive can live, I would love to hear them.
That’s all from me. Sending love and strength wherever you are, and don’t forget to look around at the world around you!