1 00:00:23,310 --> 00:00:28,170 There is an old adage that says that there are two types of 2 00:00:28,170 --> 00:00:32,850 people in the world. Those who believe that there are two types 3 00:00:32,850 --> 00:00:39,450 of people and those who don't. Among the former was a Greek 4 00:00:39,450 --> 00:00:44,880 poet who claimed that people tend to be either foxes or 5 00:00:44,880 --> 00:00:51,960 hedgehogs. Foxes are centrifugal. While hedgehogs are 6 00:00:51,990 --> 00:00:59,370 centripetal. The fox knows many things he said, but the hedgehog 7 00:00:59,400 --> 00:01:08,010 knows one big thing. I have long admired the work of Walter 8 00:01:08,010 --> 00:01:14,820 Hamady. His extraordinary handmade letterpress books, his 9 00:01:14,820 --> 00:01:22,140 prankish wit, his collages and assemblages but now and then 10 00:01:22,170 --> 00:01:30,630 I've asked myself, was Walter a fox, or a hedgehog? A fox is 11 00:01:30,630 --> 00:01:37,290 uncommonly clever, resourceful, and adaptive. Indeed, it has 12 00:01:37,290 --> 00:01:42,720 such agility that we never know what to expect from one moment 13 00:01:42,780 --> 00:01:51,030 to the next. A hedgehog, on the other hand, moves slowly and 14 00:01:51,030 --> 00:01:56,640 decisively. It survives by reliably standing its ground, 15 00:01:57,270 --> 00:02:05,280 albeit encased in an armor of barbs. Each of these cognitive 16 00:02:05,310 --> 00:02:11,520 styles has advantages and disadvantages, and throughout 17 00:02:11,520 --> 00:02:16,140 human history, both have repeatedly proven to be 18 00:02:16,530 --> 00:02:23,250 enormously effective. It goes without saying that Walter was 19 00:02:23,250 --> 00:02:30,810 in many ways fox-like; he was commonly called a polymath. His 20 00:02:30,810 --> 00:02:38,430 interests, skills and insights were so wide ranging, so diverse 21 00:02:38,460 --> 00:02:45,150 and unforeseeable that almost everything he did, defied easy 22 00:02:45,180 --> 00:02:51,870 classification. At times, his meandering flights were 23 00:02:51,870 --> 00:02:59,010 reminiscent of a Persian carpet. And at other times of the crazy 24 00:02:59,010 --> 00:03:04,530 quilts that farm wives made from the leftover scraps of 25 00:03:04,530 --> 00:03:10,530 conventional quilts. Walter's never ending quest, the term 26 00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:16,710 quixotic comes to mind, his craving for innovation and the 27 00:03:16,710 --> 00:03:23,100 complex and bewildering forms he wrought, came from juxta 28 00:03:23,100 --> 00:03:31,140 morphing art with literature, typography, teaching, parenting, 29 00:03:31,650 --> 00:03:38,040 letterpress printing, papermaking, book arts, collage, 30 00:03:38,190 --> 00:03:44,190 and assemblage. The writer Donald Barthleme said that the 31 00:03:44,190 --> 00:03:49,920 central principle of all art of the 20th century is collage. 32 00:03:51,360 --> 00:03:57,600 Walter Hamady liked to say that all life is a collage. And 33 00:03:57,600 --> 00:04:04,860 surely he himself was that a mix of antipodal cultures in the 34 00:04:04,860 --> 00:04:10,710 sense that he had come from the short lived marriage of a loving 35 00:04:10,740 --> 00:04:17,370 intelligent mother, who was a pediatrician, intellectual and 36 00:04:17,370 --> 00:04:24,930 bibliophile file from Keokuk, Iowa and a Lebanese father he 37 00:04:24,930 --> 00:04:32,520 grew to despise for abandoning the family. In his formative 38 00:04:32,550 --> 00:04:39,390 years Walter's role model in the place of his absent father was 39 00:04:39,390 --> 00:04:46,950 his devoted G-do, his paternal grandfather, Ralph Hatoum 40 00:04:46,980 --> 00:04:53,580 hamady, a wonderful man from Baakline, Lebanon, who came to 41 00:04:53,580 --> 00:05:02,910 America as a teenager in 1907. Like a story book fox, a fleet 42 00:05:02,910 --> 00:05:10,590 footed wily survivor. Walter was perforce, evasive, diversionary, 43 00:05:10,920 --> 00:05:17,790 and ironic in talking or writing or working. One moment he 44 00:05:17,790 --> 00:05:25,380 alighted here and a second later, over there. If and when 45 00:05:25,380 --> 00:05:30,570 he did alight, he was always in simply the person he was. Walter 46 00:05:30,570 --> 00:05:36,630 Hamady, founder and proprietor of the perishable Press Limited, 47 00:05:37,620 --> 00:05:42,960 originator of the Shadwell paper mill, and professor at the 48 00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:49,680 University of Wisconsin at Madison. But he also wore the 49 00:05:49,710 --> 00:05:57,000 shamiracle masks of Walter Samuel Hatoum Hamady, Walter 50 00:05:57,090 --> 00:06:07,170 Semi-Hittite Hamady, WSHH, Voltaire, the Hamadeh and a 51 00:06:07,170 --> 00:06:12,960 roster of other identities that were hit and miss, and miss and 52 00:06:12,960 --> 00:06:20,610 hit on purpose, and all at the same time. Like others whom we 53 00:06:20,610 --> 00:06:25,920 hastened to call creative. Walter was all driven by 54 00:06:25,920 --> 00:06:33,600 behavior that sociologists call the play instinct. This is 55 00:06:33,600 --> 00:06:39,270 especially evident in the lack of restraint in his toying. He 56 00:06:39,270 --> 00:06:46,380 is juxtamorphing with anything and everything. Materials, 57 00:06:46,410 --> 00:06:53,610 techniques, objects, and words. In its verbal forms, it produced 58 00:06:53,670 --> 00:07:01,530 a limitless trickle of pawns, spoonerisms, malapropisms and 59 00:07:01,530 --> 00:07:07,740 comical nicknames. I don't think any two of the hundreds of 60 00:07:07,740 --> 00:07:13,410 letters and parcels that he sent to me were ever addressed to the 61 00:07:13,410 --> 00:07:20,970 same person, much less the right person. On any envelope, I might 62 00:07:20,970 --> 00:07:28,890 find that I was listed as Roy Ball Bearings. CorduRoy, Roy 63 00:07:28,950 --> 00:07:37,950 DeMoto, Roy Blast-Off Behrens, R. Bobo, bobbing links golf 64 00:07:37,950 --> 00:07:46,050 course books. King Roy of the Bear Wren's Hens, Bear O'Bob 65 00:07:46,800 --> 00:07:53,850 Ens, and so on. In that sense, he was not unlike Mark Van 66 00:07:53,850 --> 00:08:00,780 Doren's father, as recounted in that writer's autobiography, an 67 00:08:00,810 --> 00:08:06,360 Illinois farmer who delighted in quote, calling things by the 68 00:08:06,360 --> 00:08:13,290 wrong names, or it may be the right ones. Fantastically the 69 00:08:13,290 --> 00:08:19,590 right ones. Either extreme is poetry, of which he had the 70 00:08:19,590 --> 00:08:27,120 secret without knowing that he did. While Walter was as crafty 71 00:08:27,120 --> 00:08:33,600 as a fox, one can as easily argue that he was also a 72 00:08:33,600 --> 00:08:40,290 hedgehog. Think about it. How many people in our time have 73 00:08:40,290 --> 00:08:47,160 mastered the archaic practice of letterpress printing. And of 74 00:08:47,160 --> 00:08:53,070 those how many have pursued that craft? For reasons that are not 75 00:08:53,070 --> 00:09:00,000 merely nostalgic or therapeutic, but radically experimental. 76 00:09:00,600 --> 00:09:07,860 Indeed, how many even write letters today? By which I mean 77 00:09:07,890 --> 00:09:16,710 genuine, thoughtful prose, not user mindless sound tattoos in 78 00:09:16,710 --> 00:09:24,480 the guise of email, snippets, text messages, and emoji. It is 79 00:09:24,480 --> 00:09:29,460 less known that Walter was pivotal in the rebirth of the 80 00:09:29,460 --> 00:09:35,280 interest in the nuanced qualities of handmade paper in 81 00:09:35,280 --> 00:09:40,350 the course of which as one might expect, he used it in wholly 82 00:09:40,380 --> 00:09:47,670 unorthodox ways. For example, if you can believe it, he once 83 00:09:47,700 --> 00:09:55,530 shredded a copy of my early book about art and camouflage. Long 84 00:09:55,560 --> 00:10:02,280 out of print and hard to find, to make it into paper pulp, with 85 00:10:02,280 --> 00:10:08,730 which he camouflaged my book, in a page of one of his own. 86 00:10:10,410 --> 00:10:16,993 Hamady's letterpress books are admired for his irreverent 87 00:10:17,109 --> 00:10:23,462 approach to book construction enabled by his mastery of 88 00:10:23,577 --> 00:10:29,815 typesetting, letterpress printing, and innovative page 89 00:10:29,930 --> 00:10:36,861 layout. His achievements in all these areas distinctly stand 90 00:10:36,976 --> 00:10:44,022 alone in part because he was compelled to be a sword crosser. 91 00:10:44,138 --> 00:10:51,299 A person who blatantly crosses the bounds of our most hallowed 92 00:10:51,414 --> 00:10:58,345 traditions. Nowhere is this more aptly shown, than in his so 93 00:10:58,460 --> 00:11:05,622 called gabber jabs. A long lived sequence of letterpress books 94 00:11:05,737 --> 00:11:12,668 that have no equivalent in the category of handmade artists' 95 00:11:12,783 --> 00:11:19,829 books. To repeat, the fox knows many things. But the hedgehog 96 00:11:19,945 --> 00:11:26,760 knows one big thing. If Walter was a hedgehog, as well as a 97 00:11:26,875 --> 00:11:33,921 fox, what was the one big thing he knew? I think I have known 98 00:11:34,037 --> 00:11:40,967 the answer to that from the moment I first confronted one of 99 00:11:41,083 --> 00:11:48,359 his artworks, not a book, but a boxlike assemblage at a gallery 100 00:11:48,475 --> 00:11:54,366 exhibition in Wisconsin, in the mid 1970s. Be being 101 00:11:54,481 --> 00:12:01,643 diversionary, he rarely spoke straightforwardly on his various 102 00:12:01,758 --> 00:12:08,111 trade secrets. But he left tale-tell breadcrumbs in his 103 00:12:08,227 --> 00:12:14,926 letters, his writings, his lectures, and by tacit example, 104 00:12:15,042 --> 00:12:21,972 in each and all of the things he made. In particular, he was 105 00:12:22,088 --> 00:12:29,018 prone to offering clues about his modus operandi whenever he 106 00:12:29,133 --> 00:12:35,486 talked about teaching, which he practiced sincerely and 107 00:12:35,602 --> 00:12:42,994 tirelessly at the University of Wisconsin, at Madison, from 1966 108 00:12:43,110 --> 00:12:49,232 until his retirement from teaching more than 30 years 109 00:12:49,347 --> 00:12:55,816 later. In a document he drafted in 2003, titled Hamady's 110 00:12:55,931 --> 00:13:02,977 problems of pedagogical ramble. Among his recommendations was 111 00:13:03,092 --> 00:13:09,676 that traditional principles should be studied, understood 112 00:13:09,792 --> 00:13:16,607 thoroughly, and forgotten. In another document, which takes 113 00:13:16,722 --> 00:13:22,960 the form of his own spurious obituary, he recalls with 114 00:13:23,075 --> 00:13:29,428 teaching that, quote, if successful, by the end of each 115 00:13:29,544 --> 00:13:36,474 semester, the students thought that all they had learned had 116 00:13:36,590 --> 00:13:43,751 been invented by themselves. In other words, the one big thing 117 00:13:43,866 --> 00:13:50,681 that Walter "hedgehog" Hamady knew was the teaching and art 118 00:13:50,797 --> 00:13:57,496 making and letter writing and parenting and being married. 119 00:13:57,612 --> 00:14:05,120 Along with all the other ilks of existential mindfulness are best 120 00:14:05,235 --> 00:14:11,935 when they are transactional, interactive and dynamic. Like 121 00:14:12,050 --> 00:14:18,172 Paris, they are a Moveable Feast. As much as we might 122 00:14:18,288 --> 00:14:25,333 otherwise want, our lives are rarely preordained, but consist 123 00:14:25,449 --> 00:14:32,726 of distillations of an elusive, unstoppable stream that is best 124 00:14:32,841 --> 00:14:39,194 when all its parts are contributive to its construction 125 00:14:39,310 --> 00:14:46,587 and interpretation. He liked to say this explicitly, by quoting 126 00:14:46,702 --> 00:14:54,095 the age old adage that "life is primarily about the journey, not 127 00:14:54,210 --> 00:15:01,025 the destination". Throughout Walter's life, much of what he 128 00:15:01,141 --> 00:15:08,187 tried to achieve was what he himself would call, autodidactic 129 00:15:08,302 --> 00:15:15,348 tutorials. Opportunities for self instruction. from which the 130 00:15:15,464 --> 00:15:22,625 most valuable lesson to learn is that being alive is more rich 131 00:15:22,740 --> 00:15:29,209 and meaningful when it is unanticipated, and fortuitous, 132 00:15:29,324 --> 00:15:36,601 rather than rigidly planned in advance. "If you know in advance 133 00:15:36,717 --> 00:15:43,532 where you're going," he often said, "then it probably isn't 134 00:15:43,647 --> 00:15:50,347 worth the trip". As with all artifacts, Walter Hamady once 135 00:15:50,462 --> 00:15:57,277 wrote, "books, collages and assemblages are evidence of the 136 00:15:57,393 --> 00:16:04,208 process that made them and the process is as complex and as 137 00:16:04,323 --> 00:16:11,369 interesting as the human beings perceiving it. One can see in 138 00:16:11,484 --> 00:16:18,530 the world, as much as there is to see in oneself, oneself one 139 00:16:18,646 --> 00:16:20,610 self, one's elf".