Prensa 1 by Carol Padberg

Verlag 3 by Carol Padberg

Tuesday Edition: Carol Padberg

Tuesday greetings, fine collector folk. The weather is brisk, but there is evidence in our midst that spring is about to be sprung. The sun is shining brighter and closer, and lingering longer. During evening strolls, Ollie and I have admired the nubbly tips of crocuses and daffodils on our soon-to-be-leafy block. (She's only allowed to sniff. Eating, or worse, is strictly verboten.) One particularly perfect warm evening in Austin last week gave me a tantalizing taste of the season's promise, and I've been woozy with Spring Fever ever since. Also making me woozy — with delight — are today's editions from painter Carol Padberg.

Prensa 1 and Verlag 3 speak to the typography nerd in me. That I love typography shouldn't be a surprise to anyone — this is the stuff that words are made of! Anything related to language pretty much slays me — books, words, typography, etymology, poetry, spelling bees, dictionaries, Scrabble, crossword puzzles, Bartlett's quotations, letterpress — all of it! Love. I've also had an enduring fascination with Modernism in all its forms — poetry, design, architecture, etc. And you know I love The Art. What all this means is that Carol's abstract interpretations of Modernist typography work for me on lots of levels.

As Roger Catlin said when reviewing Carol's recent Real Art Ways exhibition, Face Value, most of us don't consider what the words we write (or read) are made from. Writing for the Hartford Count, he poetically described fonts as the things "that march our ideas along, line by line, day in and day out, in column inches. There's little time to consider the spurs, tails and eyes of the letters: the neat little shoes of the serif or the sleeker simplicity of the sans-serif."

Carol's works are examinations of arts and letters in equal parts. In her statement she describes her practice as "using the 'modernist DNA' of typography fonts [to] create visual improvisations. I use fragments of found typography to take apart and put back together language."

And now, having used the language of others to describe Carol's paintings, I'll take my leave till tomorrow. I've got some gorgeous black & white photography editions to share with you, so look for me then.