Combining the art of lettering and musical inspiration, artist David Pearson has collaborated with Commercial Type and Baddeley Brothers to produce an original limited-edition poster for the ‘Orchestra of Letters’ exhibition at Snape Maltings in Suffolk.
The exhibition at the Lettering Arts Centre, to mark Snape Maltings’ 50th anniversary celebrations for its world-famous Aldeburgh concert hall, runs for three months and takes the theme of music as interpreted by the UK’s leading lettering artists. David Pearson’s poster is one of 36 pieces of original work in mixed media – stone, metal, glass, paper, wood and ceramics.
Inspired by the ‘Swinging the Alphabet’ song, performed by the Three Stooges in the 1938 film ‘Violent is the Word for Curly’, David’s A2 design uses Commercial Type and bold colours, screen-printed on 270gsm Colorplan Smooth Claret stock. Baddeley Brothers die-stamped the artist’s description, credits and limited-edition numbers on each of the 50 posters.
Baddeley Brothers’ Director Charles Pertwee said: “I was struck by the quality of the work in this exhibition. The artists, including David, who all responded to the same creative challenge, have delivered a virtuoso performance. It’s exciting to contribute to the making of a work of art, although it was also an unusual brief for our die-stamping team, who don’t often work with A2 paper. Still, we are all enchanted with the finished piece.”
In his foreword to the exhibition’s catalogue, curator Mark Frith explains: ‘The ambitions in both music and lettering, in terms of composition, are to offer and entice an emotion for the audience to discover.”
Highlights from the exhibition include Tom Young’s ‘For Dreaming’, a compelling concave slate vessel with an inward facing inscription, and Kate Scott’s ‘And Heare Are Fowles’, 18 exquisite pieces of inlaid stoneware. The Same Tune, by John Neilson, is an elegant duo of upright stones made from Herefordshire red sandstone from Grigland Quarry, which both feature the words ‘The same tune is never the same tune twice’, while Ros Pritchard has created a detailed mixed media collage on plywood board, titled ‘Palimpsest For My Brother’ which was inspired by three operas; Peter Grimes!, Billy Budd and Libretto to Curlew River. All, alongside other exhibits, are available to buy. David’s limited-edition posters will be on display until 2 October 2017 at The Lettering Arts Centre, and will be available to buy for £84 each.
