October 12, 2008: Typewriter Art

[xoxoxoBruce]

I got an email about Paul Smith, with samples of his art work.

Paul Smith, the man with extraordinary talent was born in Philadelphia on September 21, 1921 with severe cerebral palsy.
Not only had Paul beaten the odds of a life with spastic cerebral palsy, a disability that impeded his speech & mobility but also taught himself to become a master artist as well as a terrific chess player even after being devoid of a formal education as a child.
"When typing, Paul used his left hand to steady his right one. Since he couldn't press two keys at the same time, he almost always locked the shift key down and made his pictures using the symbols at the top of the number keys. In other words, his pictures were based on these characters ..... @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ .
Across seven decades, Paul created hundreds of pictures. He often gave the originals away. Sometimes, but not always, he kept or received a copy for his own records.
As his mastery of the typewriter grew, he developed techniques to create shadings, colors, and textures that made his work resemble pencil or charcoal drawings."
This great man passed away on June 25, 2007, but left behind a collection of his amazing artwork that will be an inspiration for many.

Not belonging to the Art Community in Philly, or anywhere else, I'd never heard of Paul Smith. But the story interested me enough to look him up, here and here.







I figure if you're computer literate enough to be here reading this, you've run across some ANSI or ASCII art on the web. Some is pretty crude and some is very complex, but hey, it came from a computer. Yeah, yeah, I know, hand coding, but they didn't need white-out... make a change and print, repeat.

Generating those pictures on a typewriter, even without the additional hurdles Paul Smith faced, is nothing short of amazing to me. A real