BEWARE THE TYPOS
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SLUGS AND DINGBATS

Arvada Center
6901 Wadsworth Blvd.
303-431-3939

There's still quite a hubbub over the "public art" component of the Denver Pavilions. Every new major structure is governmentally-required to dedicate a certain small percentage of its space to art for the masses. In the case of the Pavilions, it's that big red sign proclaiming, simply, "Denver." That's not art. That's a font.

Slugs and Dingbats: A Double Take On Type, running at the Arvada Center until March 25, disagrees. Fonts are artistic, and typesetting is an art as old as the printing press itself. This display in the upstairs gallery appears bare at first, nothing more than a few poems tacked up on the walls, but a closer examination of the art of type reveals the hidden talent of typeset artists.

Tom Parson gets the greatest amount of space up front, with his handset pressing of several poems, pamphlets, and posters. Parson's artist statement reveals an insecurity, an almost paranoid attitude toward the impossibility of perfection. He comes across as a man both frightened by and obsessed with detail. "There's always a typo," he confides.

Next to the statement is his best work in the show, a layout of a poem by Edith Brown called, appropriately enough, "The Imperfect Garden." The poem is alphabetical-- each line opens with the next letter of our revered written code-- and handset in Garamond type with rings of green printer florets bordering the poem, planted carefully to appear more like shrubbery than silly decorative border sections. The only typo on this piece is his drop cap, an overly flowery and intrusive A that introduces a supposedly necessary piece of imperfection into this garden.

The rest of Parson's work on display is increasingly unimpressive. His technical skill with the handpress is indubitable, but he leans toward an eclecticism of type that is sometimes visually desperate, like a brand-new computer user trying to make a poster for a lost cat on Microsoft Word. I was surprised not to see any clip art. Many of Parson's pieces date back a decade or two, before every word processor came equipped with a bevy of fonts, so I'm tempted to label Parson a victim of technology. Today, sheer variety of font is available to anyone with a mouse, and no longer much of an art.

Behind Parson, near the bathrooms, Herbert Bayer's work approaches typesetting from a different angle. Instead of being concerned with layout of text, Bayer attacks the alphabet itself, examining the shape of each letter like a lecherous old man peering at beauties on a beach. "Basic Alphabet" reveals one of his experiments, running a bold and daring alphabet in a straight line, with variations on selected letters dropping down in columns. E and R get the most attention, lending the paper a comical attitude: "Errrrr." The poor G can't make up its mind, and the T starts as a pious cross, then quickly corrects itself to a more secular, architectural shape. One's used to words saying things, but discovering letters that speak like psychiatric patients is a joy. One can stare at Bayer's work for hours, if equipped with the proper imagination.

James Johnson is equally coy, and introduces a more feminine look to the largely masculine surroundings. His "Skeleton" typeface is gruesomely witty, using drawn skeletal bodies to contort into the shapes of letters. Without muscles and skins to restrain them, the skulls positively grin with pride at the unnatural flexibility it takes to effortlessly shape our alphabet. Poking a little deeper, one wonders about dead letters.... Nearby, a typical Johnson joke called "Double Entendre" uses transparencies to reveal the hidden anagram of the word 'entendre': "Need Rent." Of all the starving artists, typesetters may be the most straight-forward.

In the middle of the room, Chank Diesel takes up space the same way his name does: squarely and hyperactively. Chank is a commercial typesetter whose "Mister Frisky" font (along with its relatives "Uncle Stinky" and "Couch Lover") graces such products as Wendy's, Taco Bell, Cool Blue Barbi, James & The Giant Peach, and something called The Margarita Ball. The products are on display under glass, like Egyptian relics. On one wall, Chank shares the stages of creation for a font called "Mister Lincoln," which is tubular and rubbery like Silly Putty, and began with the more enigmatic monicker of "Dickwhipped Lincoln." Another piece bares the motto, "Fonts for mature users." Chank would be right at home with the cartooning collective Hector.

Rounding out the show, and lending it something more dignified (in that wedding invitation kind of way), is the work of Brain Allen, the best artist there in terms of form following function. Allen is a master of the well-chosen font, playing with word placement to achieve an effect: "Holiday Card" uses a plain, blocky font and clips from holiday songs to form the image of Rudolph's face. Allen is the anti-Parson, selecting his fonts to be meaningful yet invisible, and setting his pieces with traditional form and clean balance. He is the show's best representative for the way we encounter typesetting art every day: it's so subtle it sails right by. Not to say we don't notice bad font. A friend of mine in Florida is still disgusted that we use Times for our body text. But, typesetting is a conveyance art, a way to allow other arts (in this case literature) to flourish.

Typesetting is an art like the manufacture of musical instruments, or the mixing of paint. Without it, the world would be a dull place. However, each time it calls attention to itself, it overshadows another artist's work. Fonts and the artists who create them are to be appreciated, but not glorified beyond the task they set out to do. To come full circle-- yes, the garish, over-large, non-functional Pavilions sign is art. It's just not good art. B--- Chris J. Magyar