There are artisans such as book binders and collage and mixed media artists who use letters, postcards, books, etc. in their art. This section of the Letters & Journals website will focus on these creative individuals. If you know of someone who should be featured, please email the editor@lettersandjournals.com with the recommendation.

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Amy Rice: Giving Age-worn Letters and Ledgers New Life Through Art

By Amanda N. Wegner (June 2010)

Reading old love letters, journals and ledger pages can be therapeutic, a release from the stresses of daily life. They are a record of what worked and what didn’t, a peek at what was, what could have been. They offer a full gamut of another person’s feelings and thoughts, barriers and successes.

It’s funny how, sometimes, life imitates art. Or, art imitates life.

Such is the case for Amy Rice, a mixed-media artist in Minneapolis. Amy uses “not-so-traditional print-making methods” to create art that ranges from evocative to whimsical on anything from age-worn love letters to garden ledger pages to wood panels. Amy always loved wood-cut block prints, but her wrists precluded her from that, and she found traditional print-making, which is similar to screen-printing, too technical for her creative mind. To circumvent these barriers, Amy has found burgeoning success using hand-cut stencils and a toy Japanese Gocco printer to create original works of art on found antique papers and pages.

Life with Gocco

A Gocco is a small, self-contained plastic screen-printing toy that can print small items, most up to 3.5 by 5.5 inches in size. Amy says one in every three Japanese households used to have a Gocco, but now, they are nearly extinct.

“Japan has a strong tradition of screen-printing,” says Amy, “but the advent of computers, that kind of wrecked the Gocco in Japan. People didn’t need it to print greeting cards anymore — computers could do that.”

The last Goccos were produced in 2005 and today, you can spend upward of $500 online for a Gocco. But back in 2006, Amy had the foresight to send her mother to every craft store she came upon, looking for a toy printer. Her mother found one the same week Amy bought a box of 30 journals at an antique sale, detailing the agrarian life of “Emma” of Fergus Falls, Minn.

“It couldn’t have been more perfect,” says Amy, who recently moved into a new studio in Northeast Minneapolis. “I don’t think I would have fallen in love with the Gocco had I not found the journals. Ever since, I’ve been on mission to find samples of antique handwriting.”

Aesthetic art

When Amy uses letters, postcards, sheet music, journal and ledger pages, and other antique hand-written pieces in her art, the words on the pages are not the focus.

“I don’t want it to be a written thing. I want them to see a word here or there and get the sense that it’s a love letter or a song,” says Amy. “I love the aesthetics of the handwriting.”

But finding quality antique handwriting isn’t easy. Her art combines whimsy with inspiration from childhood memories (“real and slightly exaggerated,” as she says), so the pages and words have to offer value, intrigue and personality; old business ledgers just won’t do.

“It is really hit and miss. I am always looking and searching,” says Amy, who regularly scours antique malls and estate sales for old letters, cards and books. Amy is particularly excited about two recent finds. One is a ledger book of chickens and gardens; her Grandpa Ed loved chickens and would make her scrapbooks when she was a child filled with pictures of chickens (as well as peaches and elaborate cakes). The second find is a bunch of letters from Wisconsin, her home state, in Finnish.

These found written items work well for both the Gocco and Amy’s stencil work, though the “value” of a written piece plays into how she uses it in her art.

“The journal pages with chickens and gardening feel more valuable and deserve more time,” says Amy, “so I’ll use them mostly in my stencil work.”

Gocco pieces are an accessible way for people to get Amy’s work, as the toy printer can turn out a few hundred copies a day, while a hand-cut stencil can only be used 10 or 15 times. But with parts and pieces for the toy printer no longer being made, there will come a day when her Gocco work must end.  To that end, she’s now experimenting with an antique letterpress set she recently got.

“All these pieces are little historical documents of people’s lives. People would write at length about their gardens, the new radio they got and how stations came in. It is amazing how people used to document their lives,” says Amy.

“And now, our written word is on Facebook, e-mail or text; it’s here and it’s gone. One hundred years from now, our words are not going to be here. One hundred years from now, we may not have art like this. My artwork is nostalgic; the images and words, together on paper, people are really attracted to that.”

More information on Amy Rice and Gocco

Web: www.amyrice.com
Studio: 2205 E. California St. NE (California Building), Minneapolis

Links to found written works art on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amy_rice/4043651767/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amy_rice/4028364900/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amy_rice/3907366610/

Images used in this article are all courtesy of Amy Rice.

For a video Gocco tutorial, you can click here.