This work is celebrating the first and most significant letter of the alphabet, A, the “acme” of letters. It casts its long shadow from its origin in Egyptian hieroglyphs, through Phoenicia, Greece, and Roman developments to our writing today. Throughout the ages, Aleph, the bull, has stayed number one.
Early writing - and therefore the very letters themselves - had great spiritual power. It was a highly classified tool for the powerful - but a mystery, inaccessible knowledge to the vast majority of people. No wonder it was thought that letters and writing were magic, divine, or evil. They could keep and unlock secrets.
Abracadabra first appeared to have been used as a spell worn as an amulet to ward off the mysterious afflictions brought on by malaria, first mentioned in Roman writing in the second century BCE, (Serenus Sammonicus, Liber Medicinalis). It is thought to be derived from the Aramaic phrase “avra kadavra”, “I create as I speak”.
Over the next 2000 years, it took a wild ride being used as an incantation for all kinds of black magic and the occult, circus magicians, and lately, apparently, just good enough for Harry Potter. “A”, though, reigns supreme. The large majority of the world's alphabets use Latin letters.
In this piece, the letter shapes for “A” used are the ancient, but so familiar – Roman (Trajan); the medieval uncial (with my head bowed in admiration to the Book of Kells); and Gutenberg’s first typographic font creation, Textualis (Textura gothic), with which he changed the world forever.
Letterpress on recto and verso, screen print, foil. It measures 25 x 15.5 inches (63.5 x 39.5 cm). Edition of 12, signed and numbered.
My artist books, broadsides, and loose-leaf editions are published in very small numbers, as low as five. All are hand-printed and hand-bound (in the case of books) by me, all are signed and numbered. While I am trying to be perfect, I am human, not a machine. Some variations in the editioned work are to be expected due to the processes, materials, and the artist’s change of mind. It is exactly what makes the work collectible: each piece is an original work of art. The pieces employ printmaking like original etchings, woodcuts, carborundum, screen prints, monotype, monoprint, and letterpress. Nothing is produced using digital reproduction methods.
$ 1,250