Meet the greatest one finger artist

At least that’s this writer’s view of a remarkable man’s extraordinary achievements with a typewriter.

TODAY I would like to tell you about a man and his typewriter. Yes, of course there are more pressing issues before us all. But I have nothing clever or more insightful to add to the many eloquent, intelligent analyses and criticisms on what’s going on, whether it’s the lingering pandemic, massive floods, spiralling food prices, the never-ending political shenanigans and the increasingly awful stench of corruption emanating from that arena of jokers.

Instead, I want to focus on the inspiring story of a man who overcame impossible odds with his indomitable spirit to create something gloriously wonderful. To me, his tale is a balm in our current dark and depressing times.

For most people below the age of 40, mention “keyboard” and they will associate it with the panel of keys that enables them to operate or type on their phone, computer and other electronic devices. We older folks, however, remember that panel to be an integral part of a typewriter.

When I became a rookie reporter after my A-Levels in 1977, that machine was a vital tool for my job. It was a gift from my dad, a Hermes Baby, complete with a metal cover.

The Swiss-made Hermes Baby made its debut in 1935 and because of its ultra-slim portability, it was, according to TypewriterTechs.com, “considered to be the iPad of its time”. Dad knew his typewriters!

I learned to type on it with two fingers, like most journalists. I used that typewriter for my assignments in university. But when I returned to journalism after graduating, the typewriter had been replaced by computers in the newsroom. My Hermes Baby was relegated to the family storeroom.

I rediscovered that typewriter recently. It had retained its unusual and iconic Hermes metallic sea foam colour but many parts had rusted, especially the space bar, most likely caused by my corrosively sweaty fingers. The carriage return lever doesn’t work anymore, nor the “ding” sound and the key for the letter “J” is missing.

Still, the sight of it brought back a flood of wonderful memories of my salad days as a reporter when I had to type my news reports fast and furious, in triplicate using carbon paper, to meet deadlines.

But I never thought of it as anything more than a tool to get words on a sheet of paper and, at most, create some decorative lines. That changed dramatically on Saturday when I came across a story in the StarLifestyle section headlined, “Clickety clack, type your art” (online at bit.ly/star_type).

It’s about a 25-year-old Brit named James Cook who uses typewriters to create pictures. He, however, is not the man I want to talk about here.

In today’s world, creative people use all sorts of tools to create art, like paint-soaked basketballs and rollerblades. There is even an artist who uses the wind and heat from a jet engine to blow and weld paint she throws in the air onto canvas. I kid you not!

But I was intrigued by Cook’s use of what is an obsolete and forgotten machine as an art tool so I researched “typewriter art” on the Internet and it led me to an art form that dates back to the late 19th century after the first commercially successful typewriter was introduced in 1874.

Over the years there have been a slew of artists who used the typewriter to create art pieces. Their works are undoubtedly impressive but to me, the standout artist is a man called Paul Smith.

Smith was born in 1921 in Philadelphia, the United States, with severe spastic cerebral palsy and he wasn’t expected to live long. But he proved the doctors wrong. He was 86 when he died in 2007.

His illness resulted in stiff muscles that made movement difficult or even impossible. It affected his speech, his mobility and his fine motor coordination.

Fortunately, he was raised by parents who didn’t abandon him in an era when such children with severe disabilities would have been institutionalised. He never attended school nor learned to read and only learned to speak at the age of 16.

But he found a way to express himself with a neighbour’s discarded typewriter when he was 11. The ink on the typewriter ribbon became his medium.

Smith taught himself to create his “paintings” with only the symbol keys of !, @, #, %, ^, _, (, &, ) on the top row of the keyboard which he would press with right index finger, held steady with his left hand.

He became deft at adjusting the spacing on the paper to create the effect he wanted. In time, he figured how to create shading by pressing his thumb on the ribbon that gave his pictures a more pastel and charcoal look.

In the course of his life, Smith created hundreds of artworks comprising still life, city and nature landscapes, places he visited, animals, and portraits of famous figures in history, politics, religion and entertainment.

I viewed many of his works on the Internet and I was blown away by how fine and detailed they were. His replications of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and The Last Supper are awesome; so too is his depiction of Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware, and his original Watermill scene.

After Smith’s parents died in 1967, he spent his remaining years in Rose Haven Nursing Centre in Oregon and many of his paintings are on the centre’s walls.

There are plenty of articles and YouTube videos chronicling Smith’s remarkable life. Reading and watching several of them brought tears because I was so moved by what this sweet and gentle man who could barely speak or move had achieved. He might have lacked schooling but Smith’s strategic mind enabled him to be a master chess player as well.

As a devout Catholic, he believed his artistic ability was God’s gift, and in a YouTube video titled Typewriter Artist, he said with a cheeky smile that apart from his faith, what kept him going was “My finger”.

When I heard that, I imagined his finger being touched by God like in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

Currently there are many young typewriter artists like Cook, who was inspired by Smith and is making news with his art pieces.

All are immensely gifted with an uncanny spatial ability to manipulate spacing on a typewriter to create their art. Yet, I feel none has as powerful a story to tell as Paul Smith. He certainly showed a mighty finger to his disease and proved to the world if there is an incredible will there is a mind-blowing way.

As for my Hermes Baby, I would like to restore it if I can find out where I can repair it. I can’t “paint” with it but I want to relive those days with my Baby: to hear that unique clickety-clack sound the keys make when they strike the paper and that ding sound which were so humorously captured in Leroy Anderson’s 1950 Typewriter Song. That’s the charm none of my present day devices, be it my phone, PC or tablet, has.

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.