Meet the Artist Turning Old Typewriters into Literary Portraits
A library in Essex is currently home to an unusual art show: portraits of famous writers created entirely by striking the keys of a typewriter.
James Cook was a teenage architecture student when he first discovered typewriter art as a niche hobby. What began as a diversion has since become his full-time career, fuelled by millions of views on social media and endorsements from a handful of celebrities. “All of this happened by mistake. I was quite happy to do typewriter art as a hobby,” says the 29-year-old, who is from Braintree.
His newest collection took three years to finish and pays tribute to 50 celebrated authors, an appropriate choice, Cook notes, given how many of them would once have worked on typewriters themselves. Hidden within the lettering of each portrait are small details and trivia about its subject: Stephen King’s picture, for instance, conceals the line “2,000 words every working day”, a reference to the daily target the American novelist has long set himself, a work ethic behind sales of more than 350 million books worldwide. The exhibition is free to visit at Colchester Library until 3 November.
From Wimbledon to Hollywood admirers
Though his latest subjects are literary giants of the past, Cook has built a following among present-day celebrities too. In 2022, the actor Tom Hanks added a handwritten note to a piece Cook had sent him; Hanks, a two-time Oscar winner, has amassed hundreds of typewriters “for no particular reason” since 1978, while Cook’s own collection runs to 100 machines. Yeardley Smith, who voices Lisa Simpson, also got in touch and was rewarded with a personalised portrait featuring musical notes drifting from Lisa’s saxophone, created using what Cook calls “the Holy Grail” of typewriters, one capable of striking musical notation instead of letters.
In July, Cook was asked to produce a piece at Wimbledon ahead of the men’s singles final. Working on Centre Court at three in the morning, he recalls the sound of his own typing bouncing off the empty stands: “It was just so surreal.” That piece, which took six weeks, introduced animation into his practice for the first time, 50 individual typed frames that flick between one another like a digital flipbook.
Artificial intelligence holds no appeal for him. Cook believes the painstaking effort behind each piece, sometimes a month’s work for a single drawing, is precisely what people value. “I think people really appreciate the fact that it’s all done by hand,” he explains, adding that in a good year he might complete only around a dozen pieces.
Next on his list is New York City, where he has been commissioned to mark the 90th birthday of the Rockefeller Center’s ice rink using a typewriter three times the normal size, a piece that will ultimately contain two million individual letters. An invitation to depict the Statue of Liberty is also in the works.
Source: BBC News