 My name is Samantha Cairo-Toby. I work in book arts and special collections upstairs. I just wanted to welcome you to the library and before Grandel says anything about what's coming up with the letter form archive. I just wanted to remind you that we have wonderful Harrison calligraphy collection upstairs that ties in with Hunter's work, and then we also have the grab horn printing collection with the history of printing. So lots of type catalogs They're all being cataloged right now. So there's more than last time you were here and doing about 40 a month. This is killing me. They've been sitting there for I don't know 60 years and no one has anything with them. But you're welcome to come up. All our things are in the catalog. If you can't find anything there come up and ask on the sixth floor because we do know what we have. All right. Thank you very much. Anything here? All right. Well let's see if I can click my way back to you. Welcome to letter form lectures. My name is Grandel education director at letter form archive, which is also the home of type West our school of type design and it's always pleasure to be back at the corrette. So thank you so much, Samantha, Cairo-Toby, Keniavola and Andrea Grimes for co-sponsoring this event with us. And I want to give a shout out to skilla Zachalini who's right here in the front row who does the behind-the-scenes work on our end to keep these lectures going smoothly. Thank you skilla. Okay, our current exhibition is called strike through and it features typographic messages of protest and here's the catalog. This amazing and powerful exhibition of historical. I'm supposed to use this. Which button do I push to go forward? All right, this better work. This is an awesome exhibition of historical and contemporary political graphics and it's going to be up for a couple more months. So please don't miss it. And we're actually having a salon on November 3rd, which you want to sign up for that's online. Then we've got a couple more lectures coming up this year. The next one is going to be online with renowned scholar and researcher Tosheka Arsenault Sutton who's going to lead us through the brilliant works of Louise E. Jefferson, who's a black woman cartographer, calligrapher, illustrator, graphic designer and an author. And the last one of the year, we hope you can join us online for this smackdown between a world-renowned type designer and the best calligrapher in the Iberian Peninsula. If I said Spain, he'd kill me. So anyways, actually, they're buddies. It's Laura Meseger and Uriel Miro, but that doesn't mean that we won't see some bloodshed when he gets calligraphy on her type design and vice versa. So to find out about these events and register, go here, letarch.org, slash event. Letterform Archive is the home of Type West. If you are looking to expand your typographic toolbox, develop your own original typefaces, maybe your graphic designer who wants to take your type skills to the next level, you can apply for Type West. Our 20-23 postgraduate program in type design is now offered both in person in San Francisco at the Letterform Archive and online. And in this program, you'll learn type design tools and technical skills supplemented with type history and theory courses and specialized workshops in calligraphy, letter cutting, variable fonts, marketing skills, and more. And if you would like to learn more about the program, in what we're looking for in an applicant, you can check our website. But as you can see, you'd better hurry because the deadline is tomorrow night. So sharpen your pencils. We are waiting to hear from you. And by the way, we are offering one full BIPOC scholarship and several need-based equity scholarships for each cohort, so please don't hesitate to apply no matter what your situation. Okay. And also we have a bunch of students from Type West up in the front row so you can harass them and find out how the program is going from a student's perspective. And of course, if you want to help keep great lectures like this one today going, you can become a member of Letterform Archive. Okay. And finally, you can follow us on Instagram to stay on top of our upcoming events and programs. These are our two handles. Okay. Welcome to Letterform Lectures 2022, co-presented by the Letterform Archive and the SFPL Book Arts and Special Collections. Letterform Archive is a nonprofit institution housing over 90,000 works of graphic design history. We are dedicated to the art and the craft of the Letterform. And we'd like to thank Adobe for generously sponsoring this video recording, which you can view at the SFPL website and at LetterformArchive.org soon after the lecture happens. So we are thrilled to welcome Hunter Saxony, the third who operates under a variety of nom de plume, shall we say. Hunter is a self-taught San Francisco-based calligraphy and installation artist, and his work shows interest in mortality, ritual practice, preservation, loss, and the discovery of self. He uses object, form, and text to investigate and present a delicate, but visceral look into the human condition. So without further ado, I'm going to welcome Hunter Saxony, the third. Okay. Perfect. Perfect. Oh, I think I got to hold up some technical. All right. This is dope. Thank you all for coming. We bust open this little thing. Okay. That's me. That's what's up. So the background's a little stretch. So the images, the backgrounds are going to be a little weird, but they don't, they don't really apply that much to the presentation. So I welcome you all. Thank you for coming. My name is Hunter Saxony, the third. And this is visual reflections of a black feature. Rhode Island. I'd like to start off by thanking everyone for coming. I thank the letter form archive for hosting this lecture and the San Francisco library for putting it on. Once in a while, you've got to say that you've won. I'm lit. I'm lit. Okay. Once in a while, you've got to say you've won. To me, being here with you all on this stage is a W. One that I'm going to call a victory for the underdogs. A win for the untaught, the crude, and the unconventional. A little celebration for those who move outside of the art world in its bureaucracy. But more importantly, this is a win for the homies who are no longer here and the ones that definitely should be. The city is a monster. It's one that many artists, that many artists before me have tried to conquer. I mean this path was never meant to be easy, but here I am. I'm rocking. I'm rocking every day for my friends that are no longer here, even if they are like ghosts on my favorite streets. I feel especially honored to stand here and acknowledge the energy of those before me today. Sometimes I have to remind myself that creating in this city is an honor. And it truly is. As hard as it's been for artists to continually keep making it in this city, moments like this where we come together in support keeps us wanting to be here. And it keeps me looking toward the future as crazy as I think that sounds. If Wu Tang is for the kids, then Hunter's actually the third is definitely for the future. And here I am, the last Black calligrapher in San Francisco. What a wild title. It's kind of funny to me. I had to learn a lot to understand that there may not be another like me. Early on I decided I was going to be creating from a vantage point that was a little different from the modern calligrapher. When I started working with letters, I didn't know any modern writing specialists that were Black. Moreover, from a historical standpoint, I didn't know any calligrapher that were Black. I'm sure they were out there, but they weren't documented in the books I was reading as a child. During a period of study, you could say that I learned contemporary calligraphy isn't a space filled with many Black dialogues. Artists using gothic forms of lettering as a modality in which to address Black issues is pretty rare within the art world. But the art world can seem a little too vague and maybe even a little too vast of a reference point. So I'll rephrase that by just saying SF. The art world seems, oh, just kidding. I'll rephrase that by just saying SF. Artists using gothic forms of lettering as a modality to address Black issues is very rare in the art scene here in SF. Honestly, I'm happy to position my artwork within the context of, within the context and history of Black artists in San Francisco first and foremost. I mean the best crown you wear is the one that you wear in your hometown. Speaking of hometowns, everything I know about lettering begins with growing up, well that one's just up there, everything I know about lettering begins with growing up the Rhode Island. It only feels right that I pop up the flag real quick and get things started. At the center, at the center of the flag is the motto hope, a word that's always been a driving force to my life since I was a seedling. You know, I've always hoped things would work out, but I've been very okay with driving the car of life into the night with no headlights and no destination. I always believed I would get where I need to be. There's a large part of my work, I've been parts of my art practice that are in conversation with Rhode Island. Hope, despair, Horiath and Lighthouse were all made at the height of the pandemic. I purposely use open-ended wording in my artwork. I'm definitely interested in the idea of interpretation. I've always tried to lean into the idea that the message is a piece, that the message is a combination of my intentions and what the viewer interprets. Hope to despair uses the hope motto and pairs it with one of my favorite hardcore bands as a child, despair. In interviews, they equated the band name to the difficulties of living in a small town. I think I need to escape Rhode Island to fully understand everything that I was leaving behind, my hope and my despair. Horiath and Lighthouse are both speaking to the idea of home being a metaphysical thing or something that can't be returned to as is. I think these pieces equate to me asking myself what happens if we return home and there is no home. The past is an anchor. It's a song taken from Rhode Island or Alexis Marshall. His first band, as the Sunsets, was one of my favorites as a little hardcore kid. Their wild power for sets could destroy a backyard in Coventry like nobody's business. Hardcore found me in the mid-90s and it ruled my life as an early teen. Providence, Boston, Hartford, and even Philly were all part of my musical stomping grounds. I would trace my first, engage in hardcore communities is where I would trace my first experience with drawing letters. It was always the first place, it was also the first place I found the power of words being used in a singular nature. Bands like Strife, Bloodlet, and Endeavor stayed in my head and heart throughout high school. I fell in love with trying to harness the power of words very early on, first with poetry, then rapping, and finally with artwork and installations. A written language or better yet words in general have always spoken to me. I've always wanted words to be felt just as much as I hoped they would be digested or seen. Leaving here in SF for 20 years makes even the regular parts of Rhode Island seem more quaint and more weird. If you take into account it's a moderately progressive and insanely safe, it makes it seem like it's the perfect place to grow up. And for the most part it was. I had an accepting community and a family around me, an accepting community and family around me at pretty much all times. I was given the opportunity to experience pretty much whatever I wanted and was pushed to try things outside of my comfort zones. What really made my experience slightly atypical was the lack of other black youth around me as a child. My privilege was being middle class. It allowed me to not have to consider my skin color very much. There was a beauty of just being able to fit in. Moving freely amongst different communities without having to necessarily face the fear, without necessarily having to face their fears, allowed me to have various pairs of interests which anchors my work today. I'm truly grateful for all my experiences in Rhode Island, no matter how visually dark I think I need to depict them. In Rhode Island it didn't go as much, it didn't go as well as I would hope. Maybe it was never supposed to. I grew up in a pretty strict home with a family that tried to keep me on the right path. They did their best, they did their best. A lot of my installation where it carries the weight of my experience is Rhode Island. I put myself in situations where I was forced to learn hard lessons very young. Some of those hard lessons helped to guide me to SF in 2004. I was fresh out of Johnson and Wales, totally on the run from the mafia and there was nothing you could tell me besides my real name. Around 2010, I was given the opportunity to run my own gallery inside a tattoo shop in Oakland. At this time, I was about two years in curating monthly exhibitions at a skate shop on Valencia Street. I was learning on the job, but for the most part I luckily had a really good team around me to help bring my exhibitions to life. And in 2008, Valencia was on a totally different time than it is today. I mean everything looked different, especially the blocks. Everything is different now and most of the good ones are gone. I had an amazing amount of things to learn back then, but little by little I got the ball rolling and started to carve out a little niche for myself in the Bay Area. In 2010, Oakland was not what it is today. There wasn't even a first Friday and I remember thinking no one's going to come to my art shows in Oakland. At that point, the skate shop art shows in SF had gotten very wild, heavily attended and the whole neighborhood was actually against us. No animations on that one. It was just going to like, there's no animations, but there was probably, let's see if it comes up. All right, all right, okay, okay, okay. We'll just keep rolling. Skip that part all the way. Well, to speak about stand tall, I thought I was going to bring down the text box and kind of explain it. This was probably maybe the most impactful installation, our most impactful art show I've been able to put together. It happened over the course of three years. I think in total we were able to, with of course the help of a group, I think we did 65 different three foot wide by 10 foot tall installations over the course of three years. Each artist was given a space to pretty much install whatever they felt they wanted to. My goal was to kind of have like a survey of everything that I thought was happening in the Bay Area as far as like the artistic energy. When I look at this wall, I see a lot of change. Art is definitely, you know, there's a part of art that leads to that. And a lot of the artists that are shown here are still working in the Bay, pretty much all of them for that matter. There's so much of these past experiences that when I look at them, I have to think of the people that are not here. For this little scene, I tried to include only people that are here. Stand tall was super pivotal for its time. There were very few galleries and installations on this level, this size. I did have a video that I thought was going to pop down, but it's not going to pop down. I don't think so. I kind of got to leave that. Oh, it's so annoying. All right, which brings me back to my own art installations and back to making things about living in Rhode Island. Quilox and Caviar was exhibited in 2012, part of the exhibition name, but the earth is dark, the coffin is thick, and the shroud is opaque. I've always thought it's important to have a reoccurring visual language as an artist. My installation work has allowed me to use all the elements of my studio practice together. Oh, so it's tricky. All right. This piece was meant to convey a lot of ideas. In 2012, there was a lot of talk about the world, so it felt like it was a good time for me to metaphorically burn my past. I've always felt the need to have my work be hyper-personalized, self-analyzing, and if I'm really killing it, somewhat cathartic. This piece is a ritual burning of self and also an investigation into the fragility of the black familial unit. Quilox are a shellfish native to Rhode Island, and they are the largest-shelled mollusk in the Atlantic. Traditionally, Quilox are a pretty low vibration seafarer in terms of market value. They're terrible to eat, but in this piece, they're meant to represent a working-class existence. A year later to the day, I created life's hard like Tubebox Halo, which uses the same visual vocabulary as Quilox and Caviar. In this presentation, I wanted the messaging to be a bit more focused. In a way, it's an artistic attempt to tell the same story twice. It was very important for me to have these two installations be in direct conversation with each other. Actually, Quilox and Caviar was my first piece to be reviewed in an art publication. It's crazy to think that both of these pieces were Halloween exhibitions exhibited 10 and 11 years ago. That's not even supposed to be there. Whoa! So, I guess when I was making this presentation, I decided I made it in keynote and moving it over to PowerPoint for some reason. It changed my animations and changed the order of which my slides are dropping. But I'm going to try to make it work. That's the truth. It's a marathon. A true marathon. As I began exploring ornamentation more and more, I felt the need to make lettering more immediate. Funny how my work is currently reverted back into trying to add complicated lettering and messaging. Funny how my work has reverted back to trying to complicate the lettering and messaging by adding ornamentation directly on top of it. In this series called Between You and I, I wanted to create a dialogue with the collector, allowing them to tell the viewer what they are reading if they felt it necessary. There is a logical order to the lettering, but it also takes on an incantationary form by just being arranged in a geometric configuration. Damn! It did it! So, it was supposed to make this piece, it says in session, and it says it in a clockwise manner. Kind of like I, N, C, E, S, S, A, and T. For this one, I tried to, the piece is meant to be kind of like an infinity symbol. It's hard to see without making the line, but if you went like that, it's in there. It's there, I swear, it's there. I really was into trying to put geometric elements within the work. Whether or not the person would actually know that they're there didn't really matter to me. It was just about using shape and form in a different way than I was doing most of the time. It's unfortunate that it's not going to make that little, this cute little animation for you. But this one, Perpetuate, is pretty much the same idea. It's red clockwise again, and this time I tried to use like the golden ratio shape. So, if you can see it, it's kind of spinning this way, per se. And the goals of again, just to have something that specifically only the collector would know what it meant. And the collector could then tell the person if they wanted to exactly what it meant, and you just kind of leave it to be understood as letters and ornamentation. Which I kind of like it that way. That's so sad. Oh, he's going to do it in this one? It's not. Okay, okay, okay. So for this one, in the same series called Between You and I, again, I was trying to use geometric shapes kind of hidden within the ornamentation. These two pieces are in conversation as this one uses then a geometrical mega, and this one uses a geometric alpha. It's definitely pretty hidden in there, but it's like a little triangle type shape, you know, if you see it. And it says bear, and then this one says fragility. Of course I had an animation that allowed you to see the actual omega symbol, but it's in there. It's in there. It's hard for me to even trace it out because it's really a little hidden. But it's in there. Bookends. I love script and kept wanting to involve this weird version of roundhand that I had become latched onto. This series takes pieces of song titles and places them over in paper. Over time, I started using the same measuring techniques to apply. I started using the same measuring techniques. I applied the Gothic letters to my handwriting. All of these bookend pieces play with legibility. I like the idea of the paper being in competition with the imagery on top of it. And I get asked a lot if it is intentional. And to me, it's intentional. As long as I know what it says and I tell the person what it says, reading is in there. It's part of it, but it's not what I think is the most important. I really think the flow, the form, and the shape of what's on the paper is almost more important if you know what it says. If someone tells you what it says. And these are all... The first one is a backwash. It's based on a backwash song. And this is based on a Beatles and Wu-Pang song. It says the heart gently roots. Do not bow down a hide song. And the title of the creator. And Faun Lin's Cicera. And imminent. It's actually not from a song. I just really like that word. I think my script is where I feel that I can grow the most. You know, I'm constantly trying to add something to this information. I'm always trying to figure out a new way to make this either more complicated or maybe even more clean. These are not clean. They're all complicated. But you know, such as life. Again, more things that I had animations for, but the animations do not translate over. Let's see if this one does. It's crazy. Okay. These were created over the course of one week with the Arian Press. They were included in their Fog Festival booth, which was really, really amazing and quite an honor to be able to take part of. When I was an MC, these pieces would be like going to the Motown recording studio and just freestyling the minute you got in the booth. I love how they speak to the moment they were created. The more I've tried to develop my own personal language of ornamentation, the more I've become interested in incorporating and manipulating shapes, our movements from old work into newer ideas. And these are all pretty much parts of the saying. My goal was to try to make something that looks in every corner. It looks like you're seeing kind of the same uniform symmetrical image, but actually in every corner, every section of the piece is different. And then I decided to just keep doing it. And I think that's the print. It's really just not. All right. All right. Be Ellen. My goal with this piece. And first it was made with TV Andrea, who is a really, really amazing letter press printmaker artists. Just an amazing person. He reached out out to me to just to pretty much make whatever I wanted. At the time, I was definitely feeling it was important to make a statement about what was happening in the current landscape. I made both of these pieces at the same time. And they're both, to me, they're not, I wouldn't call them protest pieces. I don't really think that I make protest art. I think that my when I'm considering injustice, I'm more or less trying to understand why it's continually replicated. These pieces are meant to be elegies. They're meant to be moments of understanding moments of forgiveness moments of rage. But I don't know if I meant them to be moments of protest. I think there's something to be said about understanding and trying to move forward with that. But they both take pieces of interviews I had read about Elijah Wood and about Breonna Taylor. I thought it was, I think it's important to, you know, to keep legacy to just change the narratives. There's so much of their story is so painful. So I thought I would try to make some work that even that spoke to the pain, but also didn't have that same, didn't have the same implications or didn't have the same impact. Oh, okay, we're back, we're back, we're back. And then after me and Deviantra did two print runs, I took a variety, well, I took about 10, I took 10 misprints and started to make artist embellished prints from those. I guess they're all going to kind of be hidden, unfortunately. You know, my other one, they are in the front, but they're all pretty wild. And I'm really into the idea of reusing imagery, you know, it's like how many times can I take one piece of paper and kind of give you the same ideas, but switch it up and give it a new energy. I think I made 10 of these. Can't really see it. So, who's race are we running from? I used some magazine pages that I had gotten in Austin for this piece. Again, another one that I don't know if I think it's a protest piece. I more think it's, yeah, there's understanding and maybe a sadness within it. But at the time it just, I don't know. So sometimes I think what you want to make is so easy to be made. It's almost like it's just set up for you to create. When I found that photo, it just, it was the easiest thing for me to create. It felt like it was something maybe that I didn't need to do, but it definitely felt very right to put that name over that photo. While I spoken at length on the series of works that were inspired by Nia Wilson's Tragic Murder, Tragic Murder, I've included a few, I've included a few of them here to say, they were all part of a single meditative exercise of contemplation, sadness, and unfortunately acceptance. There is a way, they were a way to process and let go of all she could have been. I'm not going to get down. Cartuge one and two are special to me because they're three years apart. And from my vantage point, they show a large amount of growth. This one was made first. Yeah, maybe like two and a half years, maybe not three. And they show a large amount of growth. And they're more of the idea of using elements of past pieces to make new pieces. And I kind of have been like really playing with this idea in my work lately a lot. And trying to make bigger, more, you know, every time trying to take the imagery and make it more intelligent, I guess. A lot of times I think with ornamentation, you can, you don't need to add more ornamentation. You more or less need to make it more readable or make the legibility better. And I think, yeah, as I move, as I went from this one to this one, and then to this one, those were the proposal goals, you know, to take an element. It's pretty much that side from that piece is doubled over here. And I took this side from that one and doubled it over there. And then pretty much did the same thing with this. Of course, adding a lot of new, you know, like new elements to it. But it's pretty much each all these pieces are pretty much based on the first piece. And they all kind of share the same energy. Recently, I wanted to expand on that idea. So I made a series of three pieces starting with an ornamental flower pot and arrangement, then mirrored a section of that drawing to have a starting point for the next piece. Then I repeated that process again, each time adding more and more ornamentation to the new image. And I kept making them bigger. The flower pots really are very small. I mean, it's not super small, but for me, it's small. And then ocean is a full size of paper. And this is a scan so it doesn't look as nice as it should. That's it. It's a bit more perfect. Recently, I got invited by another archive that can contribute some artwork to their to their current fall winter campaign. I'm super stoked to see these garments and the story that inspired them. Everyone who worked on this project is insanely talented and dedicated. I was given a lot of freedom on this project. We really tried to push new ideas into my letter. Another archive is a Barcelona based fashion house. They hit me up maybe a year ago to do some work on some hoodies. It was pretty much a street wear inspired kind of project. I became pretty cool with the creative director. And she allowed me to kind of start adding to more garments. And they ended up using my lettering across the whole collection. And they did pants, dresses, a lot of tool. The material choices that they have are really, really amazing and really help to elevate the artwork that's on them. And four artists came together to make this collection. Two tattooers, one a symbolage maybe artist. I guess is the best way to call what she does. And not all of the lettering is mine. I'll pretty much show exactly what lettering is mine in the next slide. So in 2017, Off-White licensed a collection of famous Renaissance paintings for some hoodie designs. It became what they did became famous for their restraint. Virgil did very little to change the imagery of each design. Okay, we don't even want to talk about Virg. Alright. Nope, he doesn't pop up. Alright, it's good Virgil. We're not even going to worry about Virgil. But the hoodies, they're in conversation with Off-White hoodies. The creative director was really, really close with Virgil. Her, his wife and the creative director are actually like best friends. So when we kind of linked, when we linked on this project, having both having a love for Off-White, Virgil and street wear. It just felt like a really, it felt right to try to make clothing that spoke to what he was doing. To do that, I decided to do the complete opposite of what he was doing. I did have some slides that dropped his hoodies. They're super simple. He really just put like text bars over like very small and very small places over the over the paintings. And I decided to do the complete opposite, put a ton of messaging over the over the tatters. Studio Contemporary is a tattoo project created with my partner and my much, much better half, Megan Wilson. Who is actually right now head to toe in another archive. Drip, yeah, yeah, yeah, she brought it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an insane honor to be creating with her in such a large capacity within a diverse and beautiful community. I'm going to try to just leave it at that and not waste any more time telling you how amazing she is. So the premise of Studio Contemporary is to is to create a tattoo that is in direct conversation with a piece of art. The final tattoo is Megan's redrawn version of my artwork with the clients with, you know, per the clients request. While I try to draw in a way that can be directly translated to a tattoo. It's important for Megan to redraw my original drawing to understand its intricacies and make sure that it's still that actually is tattooable. When the tattoo is finished, the client receives an original piece of artwork that is inspired by the tattoo. And usually I'll draw the version that they keep, I'll draw that as they're getting tattooed. So what Megan makes and what I make actually are not, we don't really know what the other one is creating. So they kind of get, it's like you're getting two pieces of art that are connected made by two people that are also connected. Oh, and yeah, the clean one, so good. That one came out great, super straight forward. And as we've, once we started like, once we started doing a fair amount of them, I think now we've probably done maybe 30 lettering tattoos, maybe in that definitely 20 to 30 lettering tattoos, we started doing the ornamental stuff. To me, of course, I think ornamental tattooing is really interesting right now. It seems like it's become like a new thing for people to connect with. To me, it's as old as time, but I'm happy to see that people are really starting to be into it. It's allowing me to kind of do, do wildness. I'm really just so honored that people would seek and collect my artwork like that. It's so crazy, so crazy to me. And again, what I draw and what Megan actually tattoos are very different, not very different, but they're different. And usually I'll try to make my design, my final design, without Megan actually knowing what I'm doing. Eventually, I think the client will expand and add the kind of wing imagery up at the top. But this is a pretty good example of what I draw and what they got tattooed. And then another one kind of playing with the same, and that's them getting the actual drawing. This one stayed, no, because it didn't stay that close. It stayed pretty close. This is probably, I think I made this in 2003. The first piece I was ever, the first piece I ever show, the first piece I was able to show in San Francisco, the last time I painted anything in San Francisco, definitely not my favorite. But it's really great to know how far I've come. That work, I don't know, I think I probably did it in a day. I think I might have drawn the letters in a day. Now, generally, I'll spend like a week drawing letters, and maybe even two weeks kind of applying them, getting them to the point where I think they should be. Calligraphy is so amazing, and there's so much growth that can happen within it. I keep trying to make my work stronger. I keep trying to look to ways to make it make more sense. And I keep trying to challenge myself with what I'm making. I don't think this is, I don't think, I didn't, this definitely is not my ending point, but it's a really good place for me to be able to look at and know this is kind of where I started. I wish my slides had worked a little differently, but they didn't. I think there's going to be like some animations. No, there's not. No, there's not. Another one, damn, that's it. Thank y'all. Now, I'm totally ready to have a Q&A with any questions that people may have, because my slides definitely did not allow me to kind of demonstrate what I plan to. But if there's any, can I run the Q&A? I'm going to hold the mic because I have to pass it around to the people. Yeah. But if anybody has a question, please raise your hand. If there's any slides or pages you want me to like put it forward, you know, you can just say like go back, go back, go forward, go forward, and now I'll get there. I have two, but the first one's really quick. The bookend piece with the lyrics, when you said that band was Hyde, was that Hyde from Chicago? Yes. Very cool. Yeah. That was deep cut. And then the second question is how did you get started in calligraphy as like a form of mark-making? As a form of mark-making? Yeah. Day one, why did, why? Day one. I mean, honestly, day one was probably an elementary school with like some little cheap, cheap calligraphy markers that were given to you. That was day, that was like day one. And it actually resonated, you know, like when I started to like really say that this was something that I wanted to do. Probably, probably in high school, you know, I had like, I had fallen in love with rapping and rapping and poetry. And it just kind of was like, oh yeah, I'll just write, you know, like I'm writing all the time, you know, all the time. And just that's kind of, yeah, that's where it started, you know. I wish I could get back to the bookend, but I can't. But yeah, that's pretty much where it started. Okay, we got another question right here. Here we go. Okay, back, back, back. Actually, my question was regarding that. Those backgrounds, the one, yeah, these backgrounds, do you create the backgrounds though, or do you find paper that is? I find the paper. Okay. And then I'll like, depending on like how big I want the piece to be, you know, I'll like glue different pieces of paper kind of together, you know. And like, I really like playing with that as well. I think that's like another way to make the work more engaging is to just kind of have two or multiple pieces of paper that really don't make sense. So this is not marks you've made. It's paper that you've bought. Paper that I've found or taken out of books. Right, got it. Yeah, definitely. There's a question right next door. With the ones that you were doing that were semi symmetrical, you're talking about the way that you were going through all the processes there. What is your technique for, do you actually use some type of, I don't know, vellum papers or like what is your technique for doing those pieces? My technique. I'm just like making, I'll either make half the image, you know, and then just, you know, just trace it. Or like for these per se, for these, since there's so, since there's like so much difference within them, I would do them in sections, you know. So I know that like this section is the overall shape that I'm, that I'm like just, you know, that I'm working with. So I would just, you know, just keep mess with this, kind of get it the way I wanted. And then I'd do another one with that same section, kind of get it the way I wanted. And then I'd do another one with that same section. And eventually I would just put them all together, you know. But actually what's interesting about this is the left and the right are different. The tops and the bottoms are different. All the vertices are different. Yeah, that was like the, that's the thing about these. There's so much variance within them, but they're really meant to look very, very uniform. Okay, the hands, the hands are going up, but I'm going to use executive privilege here because I'm holding the mic and ask you, what are the calligraphy tools that you use? Is this pointed pen? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, pointed pen and cut pointed pen. Well, I guess, no, no, no, no, no. I guess pointed pen is like you would like, no, not pointed pen, brush pen. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Where was the next hand? Okay, here. What's your process like in planning out these pieces? Do you, you know, go down lightly with pencil or do you kind of just hold in your, in your mind, the general shape and go for it? I draw them out with pencil, you know, and I kind of like draw them really small, kind of like, to be honest, like from Tetris, you know, I draw them like really tiny. And then I just kind of like blow them up and make them bigger and bigger and bigger. And eventually I'm able to add all the detail that I, that I more or less want, you know, but usually they're, yeah, usually I draw them really like, not suit, yeah, pretty, pretty small. And then I'll just blow them up. So like pretty small, like, Yeah, like a normal size, like a normal sheet of paper, you know, and then, and once I get like a pretty good shape and kind of feel, I'll take that to the printer, make a copy of it, and then refine that one. Then I take that one to the printer, make a copy, then I refine that one. I just keep doing it, you know, and eventually it becomes exactly what I want. Yeah. Lots of, lots of refining. I think I do for these. I don't even know. These I did really quick, but maybe if I were to draw them in drafts, you know, I think they might have taken like three drafts per, per piece, maybe. Okay. We got a question up here from Steven Cole. You talk about being self taught. Well, how did you teach yourself? Or did you look at a lot of books? Did you look at people's work that you admired? Or is it just a lot of trial and error? I probably would say a little bit of everything, you know. I think study is so important. I think what we, well, we're able to show ourselves as, as calligraphers per se. It really, it's, it's, I'm pretty much manifesting what I see in the world, you know, whether it's from like a nature perspective or like lettering. So I pretty much, I mean, I would say that every, all of those things, whether it's repetition and drawing, whether it's time in the library room, whether, yeah, those are pretty much the ways, you know, just, I think that if we're gonna, if you're gonna continually keep working, you just have to keep exposing yourself to, you just have to keep learning, keep exposing yourself to new things. And I guess it works, you know. Did I see, yeah. Did I see another hand up? One thing I would like to say is that I've seen Hunter's work in person and it's absolutely, like the slides are beautiful, but the work is absolutely mind blowing. And a couple of the pieces that you can't really, can't really tell from these slides, you did work on like both sides of the vellum, so it showed through, which I thought was like this one, right? Yeah, yeah. I think just like a technique, you know, that I've like tried to kind of develop is using both sides of Pergam and Nada. It's like an Italian parchment paper and it definitely allows me to do that. It's not, I think the paper, like I, people ask why does my art kind of look a certain way? And the paper is really what helps, what helps give it that luster. Why those, why the black letters kind of have a speckle to them? It's because you're actually seeing the texture and the tooth of the paper. And I, me personally, I think that, just that alone is really engaging. Like I really like the way the letters look, looking through the paper. And I also think it kind of hides in perfection in like a weird way. These, like these aren't, like, I mean here they're definitely not perfect, but they're not perfect. But because you're looking through a piece of paper, it's harder to tell when my line is not, like you're just not, like I think, I mean I can see just that one right there, you know. It's almost harder to see that that line doesn't go exactly curved because you're looking through a piece of paper. I kind of like that. That's why, that's why I started doing it because I really liked that it kind of hid, it made my, yeah, it kind of hides your errors a little bit. And when you're coloring on the paper, it makes what you're looking at perfectly smooth. So anytime you, anytime you color with black, the black is automatically flat. And that's another thing that I really like. There's no, like, there's no divi, there's no gradient, it's just like, it's a flat, perfect flat, I mean per se. Okay, we had a question in the front. How many pieces do you work on at a given time? Is it just like one at a time, or do you have like a whole bunch that you're kind of like working through simultaneously? I think it just kind of depends on what's going on in the, you know, I think my next, I mean right now I don't have any commissions on my table, you know, I'm like really excited to just think about something new, you know, something that I'll create, that I, you know, that I'll start. So I'm, you know, these pieces that you see, they all kind of look like that, you know, I think there's six of them, I made them all together. And I drew out all the backgrounds first, and then I started adding the letter, you know. I don't know if my next body of work will be like that, but I really wanted, I wanted to have the shapes, the ornamental shapes. I wanted to see them all first. So that kind of led me to make them all together, you know. So I wanted to know what was going to, what was going to be on the wall. Yeah, yeah, but right now, none in the studio, that nothing we need. Okay, hear that people? He's looking for commissions. It's almost great. Sorry, when can you see a work, like if you have a website that you can look at, on Instagram is the only place currently. Okay, great. Yeah. My Instagram is death underscore by underscore a thousand. Oh, well, it's death by a thousand serifs with underscores. And thousand is 10000 or spelled out. Yes. Yes. Thousand is 10000. Yeah. That's very true. I'm wondering if there's any pieces in the Harrison collection. Not yet. Oh, okay. But it, but in the meantime, yes, letter form archive has some of your work and people can come check it out in person there too. And okay. Hi. I'm curious if you have any more curatorial projects in mind or if that's something you've sidelined for now to focus on your work. No, no, not one. Nope. No. I am the gallery. You know, I miss it more. I miss it so much. You know, I miss being able to push artists. I miss like artist dialogues on that level. You know, I'm not, I'm having different ones now, you know, but I don't. Yeah. I don't think I'll be back into the gallery in that, in a curatorial standpoint. But we had awesome times. You know what I'm saying? You're the best. Okay. Two more. Do you have like a dream project that you'd like to work on? I have a lot of projects. I have a lot of projects floating around right now. Like they're just in the air, you know, and if they would just like come down to me, that would be like, you know, like the projects that are like, just around me are dope. But to make them happen, you know, to get everything, that doesn't always happen, you know what I'm saying? So do I have like a, I love clothing. It's my favorite, you know. I really want to make big, I mean, I honestly think my next body of work will be more, more of these. You know, I really, with lettering, but I really want to try to expand the ideas now, because I've made this piece is a, it's a refracted piece, you know, and I really want to try to make really technical. Like I want to raise the level of technical ability and the ornamental stuff. I feel like it has like the most, the most promise or space for me to grow within it. Okay, Pa. Correct me, I'm wrong. Most of your pieces using just red and black, what's the story behind that? Red and black. Like an honest story, isn't a little drawn to the occult? I think red and black, they're very powerful colors, you know, when paired together. And I like that, to say the least, you know what I'm saying? I find, I like the energy that red and black brings. But yeah, I think in the next year, I'm going to try to add yellow and maybe gray. Whoa. New colors on the way, y'all. New vibes, new vibes. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, I think I've been trying to use gray as like playing with shadows, you know? Like I want to like, yeah, I think it would be really cool if I could make an ornamental piece that had an ornamental shadow, you know? And then I can start playing with where I think that shadow falls on this ornamental piece, if I would have, you know? Obviously that is super laborious, laborious. But I think it would be worth it, you know? I just, just got to have the time. Well, I totally endorse red and black only. And gray, absolutely, there's a little room for gray. Yellow, I don't know, a little bit out there. Did I see any more questions in the crowd? Okay, one more. Some of my favorites of your stuff are, there's another kind of refracted piece that has two kind of bulbs at the top that feel almost dimensional. They're rotating, you know, they're symmetrical, but they're rotating in different directions. I don't know if you remember which piece it is, but I really love the, that aspect of calligraphy ornamentation when it starts to take on multiple dimensions. I could feel like you're not looking at a flat page. So I'm just curious if you're looking more into that kind of thing, because you're already doing, yeah, that kind of stuff. That energy, you know, yeah. I love that. Yeah, yeah, I am. But I find that a lot of other people are starting to do it right now. And once I find that, like, I'm doing something that I see a lot of people are starting to do, it immediately makes me kind of be like, I don't know. I mean, yes, yes, I think I love it, but like, it's not that hard to do and now people are doing it, you know what I'm saying? So like, it's just kind of like, damn, like I thought that was like my shit, but that, you know, that's how it goes. And that's, you know, that's okay, because that means that I need, like, I can't keep doing that, you know, like it has to be, it has to be something else, because people have figured out, I mean, obviously, like I figured out how to do that, because obviously that was done way before me, you know. But people have figured out how to do it, how to do it, and yeah, yeah, so maybe, but I do like these ones that are on the side. I think that's really cool. We'll be left to right instead of moving, like, you know, down and up. Yeah. Now I want to figure out how to do that. You know, you know the trick? The trick is making, like, for the circle one, the trick is making the shape that's coming back. Yeah. So like, I drew a circle first. All right, we're going way back. Okay, there it is. So I drew this circle first, you know, and then I really just made the outside lines, and then I just kind of connected them, you know, and like you're pretty much just drawing, I really just drew the outside lines, and then I put lines in between them, and you start to see, it starts to just make a circular image. Like it's really, weirdly, really easy to move it around. I don't believe it. It is. I'm telling you, it is. Like it's a trick. Once I figured it out, and then I started trying to figure out how to put things inside of this, you know, because in a perfect world, that's drawn with one line. Like that's the trick of it, is to be able to do it with one line. And yeah, that one is. A lot of the calligraphy I use uses a one line, a lot of the calligraphy I use uses a one line idea, is where you're making shapes, are making a lot of ornamental shapes, with one line as your start, and one line as your finish point. Like that one uses it, that low distance kind of situation is one line, or there's a lot of them. This is like the people who can peel the orange without taking something. For real? Just like that, you know? Yeah, but like that, that's like just another idea of that same one line lotus. It's kind of hidden to see where it ends, but it's really just, you know, I'm starting with one line, and making that shape, making that shape, making that shape, and then you just kind of keep shaping it, until you come all the way, all the way around. Okay, one question in the front. Oh yeah! What? Ask away! In the drip! So I know I get to watch you create a lot, so this is something that I've never thought to ask you until now, because it seems really natural when you're creating, but you're very careful about the words that you choose, and they can be derivative a lot, you know, both of us are huge hip hop fans, they can be sometimes political, sometimes personal, sometimes just weird words that you find in books that you're like, nobody knows what this means, but I love the way it sounds. And I'm wondering, when you're choosing those words so carefully, are you choosing those first, and then the embellishment, and filigree, and ornamentation that goes with it, or do you feel like the ornamentation sometimes dictates the word? Connectivity. I don't think that the ornamentation and the messaging need to go hand in hand. Generally I think it's kind of cool when they kind of like compete with each other, you know? But a lot of times I'm drawing the ornamental elements first, or I'm finding the word, and then drawing the ornamental element, and then adding the word. Yeah, I see you do it all at once, so I feel like I've never gotten to actually ever ask you that, even though I watch it happen every day at home. Yeah, at this point it's like I have words that I'm just like, I feel like the work that I'm making is so laborious that I can't make it fast enough, like I can't get the ideas out, you know? And that's like the only thing that kind of bums me out about ornamentation, like when it's getting to this kind of thing, is it just takes so long, you know? And I've already, even on like the newest piece that I've made, I look at it and I think I can, I'm already kind of past this, you know? Like there's just not enough time for me to get out the ideas I want fast enough. And that really like, yeah, that keeps me keeping words, keeping ideas, taking shapes. Like a lot of times I'll just draw, I'll find a shape that I really like, and I might not use the shape within a piece for a long, long time, but eventually I'll be like, oh, you like it, you know? And it comes into the work. Okay, we probably have time for one more question, if anybody has, I see somebody's pointing, okay? Hang on. Hello. So I had a question as far as, you know, your experience with curating and you've been in it for 20 years, you've seen a lot. What in your observations currently and in the future can the art communities in the Bay basically, like what can we keep working towards to kind of like keep that momentum that, you know, was built up in the early 2000s and you know, maybe also rebuild what we kind of have lost in the past couple of years. If you feel comfortable speaking to that, if not, fine. That's a really good question, you know. What do I think about the Bay area arts? It's changed so much from when I got into it, you know. I started curating on Valencia Street in 2006. There were so many artists. It was so easy to be an artist, you know. You could pretty much come here. You could come here and rock like a part-time job and kind of have a place to live, you know. We're so far from that, you know. And I don't even know how to keep... What I see the art world, what I see San Francisco's art world is now is so far from what I remember it or what I think it could be that I'm not really sure. Like I just think it's what it is now, you know. I think the best thing we can do as an art community is to just uplift the next, whoever's coming in next, you know. Like whatever energy they're bringing, it's going to be different. It probably is going to be different, you know what I'm saying? And I think that's just what it is. Like there's no... You know, it's not like my time is done, but like your question about the gallery, you know. Like my time's done, you know. There's a younger, more youthful energy that I think is more important than what I have to bring into the gallery space, you know. I think that's where I find the most... That's where I think it's the most engaging, you know, within the youth. Am I at those galleries anymore? No, no, not really. But I know they're rocking, you know what I'm saying? And that's what it is, you know. Like until... Like, yeah, they don't even know that I'm rocking, you know what I'm saying? And like that's what it is. When I was here, when I first got here, I didn't know about any of the fools showing that. I don't even know. Like wherever, you know what I'm saying? I was so out of that scene, you know. And I think now in the, you know, maybe like for people that are like 30 and above, you know what I'm saying? There's a whole new... There's just a new scene, you know. There's a new culture. And I think that needs to be embraced just as much as when maybe like we were the new, we were embraced, you know. That's what it is, you know what I'm saying? This city is like, is made on that, you know. It's made on the new energy. It's really not, it's really not kept for like the old school, you know. The old school eventually just kind of goes out. And the new school just keeps being new. And I think that's okay. I think that's like actually, I think that's the way it should be. Okay. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah. Thank you everyone for attending. And don't forget letter form salon on strike through on the third and get those applications in for type West tomorrow by midnight. Thanks SFPL. Thank you.