This Spring we have an outright obsession with words, letters, the printed word, handwritten fortunes, art and hand wraught Love Notes. Meaning and power become altered inside of us and take on new forms when simple messages appear in places you would least expect.

Like Etsy proves, the handmade is hot.  A new book, Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting is further evidence that after tech everything… handwriting…precious and archaic, has an appeal.  When street artist, Banksy’s, writing on the wall goes for £96,000 the market for the Mark of the Hand is definitely back.

Inspired…

on April 19th, 2008, we sowed the Word.

In the riot of color and energy that is Saturday in Union Square Park in New York City, we placed and scattered and passed along golden tubes with little messages inside, transforming and interjecting surprise into the day.

Tiny golden tubular Love Notes tied with red string or rubber bands, appeared at people’s feet, under trees and all about the Park ending at the feet of the Ghandi statue.

The art continued as the magnificent mix of Union Square’s curious people picked up the Love Notes, read them, kept them, passed them on, put them in their pocket or shared with a friend.

The public art orgy culminated and got super hot, especially when the bunnies, white-tailed deer and red-breasted swallows were released at the orgasmic musical finale. Stay tuned for more!

The photos of this surprise urban intervention were taken by by Alvaro Montagna of Small Earth.

Kicking it back old-school, printed notes can be found in ancient settings following traditions. Finding by chance a Buddhist temple in Chinatown the other day at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Mahayana Buddist Temple, we saw big red lacquer bowls of the golden fortunes just like the Love Notes. Traditional temple-goers seek Chinese wooden fortune sticks for insight to their future. Big in Japan as well, fortunes grow on trees and in temples.

As you can see we collect Love Notes notes and post them like prayers on the wall.  We are charmed by found art, it has become a whole culture which can be dived into at Found magazine.

The Writing was on the Wall at the recent ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair) show with Tracy Kendall’s wallpaper.

The ultimate word-artist has met Twitter, see: Jenny Holzer on Twitter .See also PSFK’s piece on Jenny Holzer and Twitter.  Jenny is one of the original wordsmiths…our favorite is MYTH CAN MAKE REALITY MORE TANGIBLE.

Another “online nerd, word high” is The Big Word Project where you can own your own words.

MAKING MARKS AND VIBRATIONS INTO SPACE

The human desire to communicate with the heavens and/or each other seems destined to dance forever between the tangible and the surreal. The writing may be on the wall, in cosmic billboards known as crop circles or in a fortune found on a palm or in a sugar cookie. Writing and Words to tell a story is forever compelled by the marching on of human and maybe animal and spirit dreams. It’s just as fascinating to watch China pop from the tangible and centuries of ritual into the wide space of the 21st century in mere years as it is to see the brilliance and perfection of a crop circle, realize it could be graffiti from other places and have it give you the chills.

THE END.

+++

written by Jade Dressler