Good friend and Professor of Illustration at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Don Kilpatrick, refurbishes discarded letterpress machines from an industrial age gone by, designs personal typography and inspires his students to transform their creative vision into printed form. Over the last four years, Don has been Share with us a moment of inspiration that was poured into Wish Diamonds, a new exhibition featuring letterpress, carved lino plates, and hand printed works on paper at the Butcher’s Daughter gallery.
mM : When approaching letterpress, do you steadily plan each piece or do accidents happen along the way, contributing to the final outcome? Please explain:
I plan a lot of what I am to do when I work in this medium, I measure everything in picas and points to get sound “lock-up” of my image and type, but what I love is that I don’t have as much control over what I am doing sometimes. Sometimes if the press is off just a bit, then it really affects my work. Each press I have brought back to life seemingly has a soul of its own, and this has taught me that I can’t really over control my work. It was so hard at the beginning just to get a consistent looking piece from this process that I almost gave up, but I hung in there and I feel it has made me a more daring person.
With many of the pieces in Wish Diamonds I have used Vandercook cylinder proofing presses where I have purposely not inked up the presses rollers, but I have hand inked each impression which creates what I like to call a mechanized monotype with the final print. I find this more interesting, and working this way combines my love of painting with the more ordered and seemingly more structured method of painting.
mM : What is your favorite typeface to date? How did you come about its evolution and translate it in letterpress?
I love Octagon and Italian grotesque. Both of these typefaces are ones I have come across when I have collected old books. I first came across Italian Grotesque when I bought a French religious book from the early 1800’s, then found out what it was called when I started studying the Rob Roy wood type collection. At that time I discovered Octagon. Octagon is a typeface that is believed to have originated in Paris around 1830, but has such a modern feel to it. I took specimen sheets from these typefaces, scanned them, vectored them, then output them have them laser cut. In addition to having these typefaces laser-cut, I combine this with time tested tools like old printers saws that enable me to cut the substrate to the proper size.
I love both Octagon and Italian Grotesque because they aren’t perfect, and they have a lot of expressiveness to them. Italian Grotesque is something that I am almost positive that someone with a clean aesthetic would disdain, and I love how clunky it is. Octagon has an epic quality to it in that it feels like a loud mega-stadium concert, and that is why I love it.
History : Italian Grotesque or Grotesque was an extravagant style of Roman decorative art inclusive of strange, fantastic, and unpleasant imagery and then arranged in a pleasant manner. This style was initiated in AD 64, was lost, then rediscovered at the end of the 15th century. In typography, Grotesque or Grotesk is a German synonym for sans-serif typography, “You know the typographic variety without feet?” Or you can refer to Merriam-Webster’s translation, “A style of decorative art characterized by fanciful or fantastic human and animal forms often interwoven with foliage or similar figures that may distort the natural into absurdity, ugliness, or caricature. (Above, Herbert List, Grotesque Figure, Park of Palazzo Orsini, Bomarzo, Italy, 1952 and The Astrologer: woodcut illustration by Hans Holbein for The Dance of Death, 1528).
mM : Blind ambition, allegory and affectation. Sounds like a medley of challenges and triumphs poured into your exhibition. Can you share more about the theme and concept of your exhibition.
Kilpatrick : When I first thought of this body of work four years ago, I was intrigued by how we all can tend to be anxiously looking for something else in our lives when we already have so much to be happy about. This work also sprung from the personal feelings I have about authority, and how doubt or questioning can be a dangerous thing especially for a person of faith.
For example, in my piece Rider’s Folly, 2012, a rider is suspended in space, falling off of a horse that is broken open to reveal diamonds that were contained inside. To me, the horse represents the driving force behind ones ambition, and in this piece, the viewer witnesses the dangers of misdirected focus. Wish diamonds are those things that we want (and in some instances, what we get): but at what cost? The rider in the piece is so close to attaining his desire, but his efforts fall apart and he realizes/sees it all as he falls. It is so close, but yet so far from reach.
You can see more of Don Kilpatrick’s exhibition, Wish Diamonds, at the Butcher’s Daughter gallery through December 23. (Read more, Heidelberg Park)
