Happy Birthday Jack Kerouac

I created this Calligraphic Tribute to Jack Kerouac for an exhibit of Lowell artists at the Galerie Quatre Saisons in Quebec City as part of the Rencontre Internationale Jack Kerouac in 1987. This what I wrote about the piece:

A name is a powerful thing. This is a tribute in letterform to Kerouac, using his full baptismal name. When I chose the color of ink and paper, I was thinking of these lines from Dr. Sax:

"that daguerreotype is gray all over, but my mother's robe sends auras of warm brown (the brown of my family)"

All the writing was done with a brass pen handmade by Philip Bouwsma and Mont Blanc brown ink on gray laid Strathmore bristol.

You can download a powerpoint slide show of an artists' book I created for the exhibit, Contradictions: Jack Kerouac, Lowell, The River here.