Remember when school essays had to be handed in typed, double-spaced and perfect? I’m talking before computers.  I’m talking about using a real typewriter. Well, I do. I hired someone to do a term paper for me once. Just the typing…not the writing. I didn’t read it before handing it over to the prof. When I got it back I had had oodles of marks taken off for spelling errors and the fact that several paragraphs had been typed twice! I had no one to blame but myself. If I had been a good, clean typist I could have done the work myself and saved lots of money and my reputation. So, I’ve established I’m not a great typist.

I’ve just come across an artist named Paul Smith, a guy who suffered from debilitating spastic cerebral palsy from a very young age and who was pretty much incapable of taking care of himself. What he did figure out he could do is amazing.  The guy started playing around with a typewriter and found he could create art….

Paul started all this at age 15 and it became a way of life for him…a way of expressing himself when no other method would do.

Since he couldn’t press two keys at the same time, he almost always locked the shift key down and made his pictures using the symbols at the top of the number keys.

In other words, his pictures were based on these characters …

@     #     $     %     ^     &     *     (     )     _

Just another truly inspiring person who found beauty in an everyday object – the typewriter. As an artist, I am humbled.