artist’s statement In Portraiture of Language, the codex explores several themes within Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons. Themes such as contrast/paradox, repetition, and change. I found myself entirely perplexed and amused by the strange arrangement of words free-falling in an experimental jargon of poems within Stein’s work. Rather than devising meaning from the madness, I decided to find pattern within the poetry and relate that to Stein. I found the predominant themes within Tender Buttons enlightening, thus I wanted to visually illustrate Stein’s poems through type.
Portraiture of Language a typographic exploration on themes within Gertrude Stein’s Poetry
designed by Mercedes Padro
Table of Contents contrast/paradox Rhubarb A Piano A Red Hat
repetition Asparagus A Long Dress Careless Water A Feather
change Nothing Elegant A Brown Sausages
contrast/paradox
Rhubarb is susan
n a s su
not seat in bunch toys not wild and laughable not in little places not in neglect and vegetable not in fold coal age not please.
a piano
N If the speed is open, if the color is careless, if the selection of strong scent is not awkward, if the button holder is held by all the waving color
THERE IS NO COLOR, not any color. If there is no dirt in a pin and there can be none scarcely, if there is not then the place is the same as up standing. This is no dark custom and it even is not acted in any such a way that a restraint is not spread. That is spread, it shuts and it lifts and awkwardly
NOT AWKWARDLY
the centre is in standing.
O
a red hat
dark uite q a , oney rk gr it is so m a d y arily, a ver grey, rous ordin k r a is Ad nst sary. there is mo eces n grey because t o e of s t is n r any us t ing i strou h t o y f r tha eve is in ment y place s u g f red I r a . n in it at ha t an ere a is th place th at no Is th even so y re an d it an er, is the ed out. tt h is be ch stretc u m so
d e r no
repetition
asparagus
aspargus in a lean in a lean to hot lean to hot this makes it art and it is wet
WET WET WET WEATHER wet weather wet.
C C
a long dress what is the
U U
T N R E R T N R E R
that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this. What is the wind, what is it. Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, on a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is a scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.
careless water
No cup is
BROKEN
in more places and mended,
that is to say a plate is broken and mending does do that it shows that culture is Japanese. It shows the whole element of angels and orders. It does more to choosing and it does more to that ministering counting. It does, it does change in more water.
Supposing a single piece is a hair supposing more of them are orderly, does that show that strength, does that show that joint, does that show that balloon famously.
a feather
med
trim
A feather is trimmed it is trimmed
by the light and the bug and
the post, it is trimmed
by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted resources and loud volumes. It is surely cohesive.
change
nothing elegant
A charm in a single
charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest.
a brown
a brown which is not liquid not more so is relaxed and yet there is
change a news is pressing.
sausages
Sausages in between a glass. There is read butter. A loaf of it is managed. Wake a question. Eat an instant, answer. A reason for bed is this, that a decline any decline is poison, poison is a toe a toe extractor, this means a solemn
e g n a ch g n i g n a h No evil is wide, any extra in leaf is so strange and a singular red breast.
designed by: Mercedes Padro printed and bound by: Mercedes Padro typeface: Trade Gothic, designed by Jackson Burke September 2014