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Typewriter returns with art, story writing

Exhibit gets in spirit of revival of interest in old-school form of typing

The Columbian
Published: February 8, 2015, 4:00pm

BEND, Ore. — Long before the advent of tablets, laptops and, heck, fax machines, the sound of clacking typewriters, with their telltale “dings” and whooshing carriage returns, filled offices across the land.

Not so much anymore. However, the nearly obsolete machines are getting some love — and a chance to make some old-school racket — this month at Atelier 6000 Printmaking Studio and Gallery in the Old Mill District of Bend.

Manual typewriters including Underwoods, Smith-Coronas and Remingtons were on display when “The Typewriter Returns!” — see what they did there? — opened during First Friday Gallery Walk.

The exhibit, which runs through Feb. 28, is both visual and tactile.

The show features contemporary prints of antique typewriters by printmakers Ben Rosenberg and Carol Wax, who use centuries-old printmaking techniques to create their works.

Visitors will see nine of Wax’s pieces, seven of Rosenberg’s, in “The Typewriter Returns!”

To create his painterly prints, Ben Rosenberg favors monotype, a process described on his website, benrosenbergillustration.com, as singular works created by painting images on a plate surface, which are then transferred to paper using an etching press.

They are either a single color or hand colored using watercolors or gouache.

“It’s a completely unique, one-of-a-kind print,” said A6’s executive director, Dawn Boone.

Artist Wax, who lives on the East Coast, originally trained to be a classical musician but fell in love with printmaking, according to her biography at www.carolwax.com.

Boone calls Wax the queen of mezzotint, a laborious intaglio technique developed in the 17th century in which the artist works a plate to reveal a range of blacks, grays and whites. Wax wrote a book on mezzotint, “The Mezzotint: History and Technique,” first published in 1990.

“It’s kind of fun, because it’s the same subject matter, but two totally different processes. One’s very controlled and meticulous, and the other is very loose and impressionistic,” Boone said.

Along with the prints, there will be about nine antique typewriters on hand.

Atelier 6000 holds its Students to A6 program several times a year, and is in contact with several Central Oregon schools about visiting during the exhibit.

Visiting artist Leigh Knowles Meeter will give an “Intro to Mezzotint” Art Talk at 7 p.m. Friday.

Additionally, Boone said, “Classes will be coming in, and we’ll be explaining the difference between monotype and mezzotint, and then the kids will have a creative writing exercise writing six-word stories on the antique typewriters in the exhibit.”

The community is also invited to participate in the story-writing exercise.

Grant money has enabled the gallery to purchase typewriters, said gallery director Julie Winter.

“We will use them long after this exhibit, which is exciting, for showing kids machines and the return is not down here. It’s this motion,” she said, moving her hand in a nearly forgotten way, “and the ding, and the noises.”

Boone said, “I think there’s a little bit of nostalgia around (typewriters). There’s such a fun, tactile quality to them. The experience feels more authentic.”

There’s also a beauty to them, she added.

“They’re practical, but now it’s an art form to type with them because it’s all done by hand again. And then of course (there’s) the sounds they make. They’re a relic, but I think people don’t want to see them disappear.”

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