Hi all,
The Private View went really well! It was lovely to see many friends and family come out in support of my artwork and the new book. Although this blog is not the most appropriate place to whitter on about the new book, I felt some of you may be interested in this new book as it contains alot of poetry and my own concept of poetryart®.
I will be setting up a new blog for it and posting some of the poems, or you can join my facebook page
'PoetryArt lovers in Bromley Kent UK' where I upload new poetry for your perusal and also the artworks in low-res files.
All of it is available as
posters in smaller sizes and the big A1's. I was inspired by the religious A4 posters I was subjected to as a young teen, which you can pick up in Christian bookshops. They often have Psalms on them or indeed just a thought for the day. The idea that people would want words rather than pictures on their walls is very interesting to me and I advocate the written word as something to be reveled in. I studied typography 'on the job' so to speak and I became very interested in its layout and the impact it can have on the reader providing they understand grammar. This is a disappearing art-form in my opinion, the 'dumbing-down' of language to suit the masses is a great shame. I cant understand why people would want to do this, surely we should be educating and encouraging the complex nature of English?
The use of grammar greatly changes the emphasis of what is written and the use of typography can further enhance the experience of the written word. I'm a great advocate of choosing the correct font and line spacing! The onset of DTP, as it was known back in the early 1980s, meant that anyone with a simple Apple Macintosh could create their own literature or advertising materials. This however led to an erosion of correct English and the Americanisation of our language which is a great pity. Not that there is anything wrong with American but it is a completely separate language with its own grammar and spellings! Lets see what we can do about saving English and its foibles, maybe Ill start another group on
Facebook? The use of DTP led to people rushing through designs, which in those days was my main interest as I was training as a graphic designer, but in hindsight it also led to poor typesetting and language skills. People simply wrote to fit or allowed their program to hyphenate in an appalling manner running text all over the place. the default settings were often not changed and it soon became apparent what literature was 'DTP'd' and what had been professionally set and laid out. Of course in those days the only typesetting available was from dedicated typesetters and through the printer themselves. It took the form of Galleys and the setting up of each galley required a trained Union professional as the typesetting machines were huge, cumbersome pieces of specialist kit allowing only one line of text to be viewed in an awful green akin to the PCs at that time, of course things like justification or lining left had to be input much in the same way as code for your PC when wanting to access the correct drive.
Apple of course changed all of that and opened up the world to an easier more visual way of creating type. However it did also lead to the erosion of skill sets, which some may think a good thing following on from the 1980s strikes in the UK and Union clashes with the police. The Print Union being one of the main culprits at that time. If perhaps people had seen what was happening within the industry and had crystal balls they may have taken a more sympathetic approach.
Back to the current use of grammar and typography and we have the American format of language taking over our PCs and Macs for email, people don't change their settings and so the spell checks are inadequate and incorrect! The grammar is also flagged incorrectly and I think actually makes people less thinking and they don't use their skill sets acquired at school. Argh School in the UK, thats a whole other story which of course directly relates to this subject. Ill get back to you on that one!
I hope you read the book and by all means flag the incorrect grammar and spellings as the final editing was done under the duress of cancer, so you are bound to find tons of mistakes.
Siobhain Hill.
