Jennifer Heuer, "This Is the City & I Am One of the Citizens," 2009
A TYPOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION
Lucky Gallery
176 Richards St., Red Hook
Open Saturdays & Sundays 1:00 – 6:00 through January 10
Closing party: Saturday, January 9, 6:00 – 9:00
Admission: free
www.luckygallery.com
The Lucky Gallery celebrates the written word, the commercial image, and the T-shirt in a rather poetic exhibition curated by Ben Peterson. Nine artists (Ed Nacional, Friends of Type, Jennifer Heuer, Jessica Hische, Justin Thomas Kay, Meg Paradise, Pablo A. Medina, Pillow Fort, and Travis Simon) created new pieces for the show, selecting and designing quotes from Walt Whitman’s LEAVES OF GRASS and turning them into T-shirts that were given out at the December 5 opening. While the front of each shirt was colorfully designed by the artist, the back contains the same quote in Slate and Egyptian Slate typefaces, demonstrating the visual language of words, especially in an era when more people than ever before know about font usage because of the computer. Whitman himself trained as a printer’s devil and a typesetter in his early years, when he lived and worked in Brooklyn. There will be a closing party on January 9 at 6:00 featuring the artists, special guests, readings, and a performance by Boston band Voyager.