Les écritures de la "S"
Cover photo: La "S" Grand Atelier / Amandine Nandrin • Edition of 182 pages, handmade bookbinding and edited in 3 copies.
All the writings and signs in this edition were created during a typography workshop which I held at La "S" Grand Atelier, Vielsalm, Belgium, during a residency. All have been isolated and classified by typography weights and frequency of occurrence, in ascending order from the Latin alphabet to invented signs.
This edition aims to show the diversity of signs produced by the mentally challenged artists: Marie Bodson, Gabriel Evrard, Joseph Lambert, Pascal Leyder, Léon Louis and Dominique Théâte, and allow a wider audience to step into their world.
I was able to work with different artists, both literate and illiterate, but all of whom have a regular practice of writing. By offering them different exercises specific to each one, through a graphic tool - the normograph - with which we created a typography with Dominique, sounds that I came to emit to them and that they transcribed. Seeing how they deal with sheet space, layout when writing, from a word or a picture, was interesting. So there was a system of narration and representation that was created. All of this has been achieved through a range of documents covering writing since its inception, so that artists can get into the subject and feel comfortable with it - indeed most of them work from printed visual documents. I also analyzed some of their gestures, movements when they were writing, which I reproduced in silkscreen.
La "S" was created on the initiative of CEC La Hesse and the non-profit organization Les Hautes Ardennes with the goal of cultural and social recognition of mentally handicapped artists and of enhancing their artistic production. You could say that this is a kind of artistic laboratory which brings together professional artists - the animators - and artists with mental disabilities.
La "S" is made up of different workshops: painting, engraving, wood workshop, textile creation, music, animation, analog photography, screen printing and clay modeling. This allows everyone to express themselves in their own way and to flourish fully in the chosen disciplines.
