AIDS Quilt     1983

Artist Note: AIDS is not calligraphy but a ballroom of quilts. Some posters can be interpretive. It was a carpet of shame and still is. The shame is our complacency. The quilts could cover the USA. The Butterfly folded pen was perfect for the prime-evil. Graphically, handwritten letters can lead the eye. All 130 posters were people. (When I have done 500 or 1000 names on a certificate, each is written for my daughter. We have to find a way.)
You will find this poster in the Portfolio section "Posters." Although posters far outnumber any other applied lettering design (near 3000), a poster is still one of dozens of applied usage of calligraphy in communication. Most applied lettering design (including posters -except for color which is added later) is reproduced; that is, written on blue grid paper and reproduced by the fast printer on a non-repro photocopier. The blue disappears. On all but a rare few posters I have done since the seventies, I always left the final or camera-ready blue grid -now changing its name to the "master-grid"- shy of a title, a cap, dingbats (printer's ornaments) so I could practice 100 variations of, in the present case, "Aids."


Watercolor, Tape nib, on 8 1/2 x 14" blue grid. (The calligrapher can select a number of colored papers or card stock for any one piece).