Constable is known for his way with oil paint, Barbara Hepworth for how she could chisel stone to her will. The tool of choice for James Cook, however, is the typewriter. In his hands, underscores and hyphens become building blocks of grand edifices; brackets are transformed into facial contours.
James discovered the machine's creative potential in 2014 while still at school. Asked to explore artists who experimented with different technologies, James came across Paul Smith, a mid-20th century American artist, who – you guessed it – worked on a typewriter. “I printed out his work and studied what specific characters, letters, numbers, punctuation marks he used for different subjects,” he says.
From there, James tinkered on the typewriter while studying for his undergraduate and master's degree in architecture. Graduating in…
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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2025