By Claire Gunning
Opinion Editor
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibit “Ed Fella: Free Work in Due Time” touches on aspects of both creative design and intellect.
“Ed Fella: Free Work in Due Time” showcases five small masterpieces intricately woven together to form walls of beautiful typography in the small room which the exhibit is held in. Although small with many abstract pieces jumbled together, the exhibit shows a clear link between design and word play by creating intricate pieces that flow across the room.
The one room exhibit showcases hand drawn letterings are designed around the ideas of old flyers, with the words jumbled together and many flyers covering the walls of the room. In the center of the small area is a table which encloses more individual flyer letterings at a smaller size than the ones portrayed on the walls. The exhibit was opened on Jan 14 and is planned to close on June 30.
Photos: Ed Fella excites with new exhibit at LACMA.
The artist responsible for hand-creating the typography in the exhibit is Ed Fella, also works as an educator. He works with typography and the design on canvas and he does not currently have any other exhibits at the LACMA. He has had exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as at the Contemporary Museum of Art in St. Louis.
Ed Fella museum description from LACMA.
In addition, various shades of beige on one side of the room and the louder colors for the flyers in the frame added a needed dimension to the exhibit. The flyers were colorful and had varying letter sizes and shapes. The actual flyers were well put together by including various colors and sizes of paper for the flyers.
One thing that could have been drastically improved upon in the showcasing of the art pieces would have been having more stand alone pieces on the walls, the exhibit as is has two large collections of flyers all side by side, and due to the small space, becomes overwhelming when observing the pieces as a whole rather than each individually. A greater collection of stand alone pieces would cause a needed break up in the room to not bore the art patrons.
When looking at each individual flyer, the typography is intricate with no mistakes or blemishes on the paper. Words overlap and are thrown all over the papers and yet the penmanship is remarkable, something that could be unnoticed if someone only looked at the pieces as a whole instead of also taking into account each individual flyer. Larger individual pieces could help bring out this overlooked aspect for the artist to create more of a focus to the typography the entire exhibit focuses around.
Along with the intricate typography, it is also noted that the artist does various styles of typography all over his work, such as varying letter sizes or making letters cursive. By incorporating small symbols and different “fonts” for each of the flyers, the artist manages to keep the exhibit exciting and enjoyable, even for only a small amount of time.
Due to the fact that the exhibit is only one room, one can not help but feel too close to the expansive works that would have been much more appreciated on a larger surface space to consider the whole design as a whole instead of individual parts. A larger venue would have been appreciated to make the pieces seem less daunting, as the letters were large and copious and needed more blank space to appreciate the fine-tuned detailing each flyer took.
The typography flyers were amazingly done and the design and word choices had a clear link, even if slightly marred by the cramped space and overwhelmingly complex pieces.
The exhibit is located at the LACMA, located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles and is included under general admission at the museum.
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