My work in letterpress printing involves layering letters and words to create portraits. The words I choose often relate to the history of social change. This piece is created with letterforms from “my dear friend” and “my dear sister,” inspired by Sarah Grimke’s salutations in her “Letters on the Equality of the Sexes,” I pulled letters—such as the Ds, As, and the Rs—that make the phrases from a variety of different fonts. As I arranged four forms of wood type, I considered how the layers would progressively build light and shadow. The combined forms create density in the image while the character of individual letters adds detail and rhythm.

Letterpress from Wood Type

Leslie Nichols