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make.co
Victoria Rose Richards
James Cook
ONE LETTER AT A TIME
JAMESCOOKARTWORK.COM
Fog rolls in off the Thames River bank. It spreads through London’s Trinity Buoy Wharf and its colorful
shipping-container work studios. The faint sound of a typewriter fills the alleys and the streets. Its
source, James Cook, is working late on a portrait — using a 1930s manual typewriter.
Cook is a UK-based artist who has gained worldwide recognition for his unique and intricate
typewriter art. Using only the keys on one of his 63 manual typewriters, Cook creates highly-detailed
works of art that range from retro-futuristic aesthetics to re-creations of seminal works from past
masters.
Cook’s use of different fonts and letter sizes create contrast and emphasis in pieces that often use
multiple layers of typing to create texture and depth. He got his start with a secondhand 1953 Oliver
Courier typewriter and prefers discontinued and antique typewriter ribbons for the color black, and
sometimes red, blue, and yellow. Those with a keen eye can often find words or phrases related to the
piece hidden within the art itself.
Restricted only by the typewriter carriage size, Cook is not limited to a single sheet of paper for any
one work — from diptychs and triptychs to panoramic views of cityscapes, he can expand the work over
multiple sheets pieced together. It takes him about a week to create a single-sheet portrait. It’s a single
person at a single typewriter, analog art by human hands — a rarity these days.
And a request from the artist himself: If you have a musical note typewriter, Cook would love to chat.
Send him a note at instagram.com/jamescookartwork. —Cabe Atwell
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