So I stopped into the Arron
Brothers Store which used to be my favorite Art
Supply Store. I needed a few Art supply items. I have
been doing most of my creative artwork with Adobe
Photoshop, so I admittedly have not been a very loyal
customer for the past few years. But today I was back
in their store once again. There were no art
supplies. The entire store has been converted into a
frame peddling operation. They are now in the
business of selling colorful unnumbered prints by
popular ink peddlers posing as artists. You can also
buy from them mats and any or style of frame
imaginable. But you cannot buy the stuff that
imagination is used for, the supplies and tools of
the creative artist.
I asked the young clerk if there
was perhaps a section of the store that I had not
detected. A place where I can buy some "Press
Type " for a project that I had in mind.
She stared blankly to my question and responded -
"What kind of Type?"
So. That's what it's come to. Am
I so old that I want to buy stuff that no longer
exists? My mentor Deroy Jones, at Wright Patterson
Air Force Base, made me learn to use a Leroy
Lettering set in his art shop, when I was a
college intern. He had used it in WWII, and believed
that every young artist should know how to put pen
and ink to paper. He hated my occasional use of the
new medium of presstype. Artwork today is an animated
gif, in cyberspace. Artists today only recognize a
font when it comes preloaded with Windows 98, and my
project is stalled, while I find an ancient art
supply store, somewhere in the real world.
Or I guess that I can give in and print my project on
an Avery Label... |