Lulu Henle
I grew up in a community of artists in rural New Hampshire, where making and creating were a natural and integrated part of everyday life. I left home early to attend The Putney School, an historically progressive and arts-focused boarding school in Vermont. There students are challenged to be active builders of their own community, doing everything from mucking stalls on the school's working dairy farm to writing theses on Shakespeare. At Putney I studied drawing and printmaking, and fell in love with the practice of printing, using big machinery and heavy ink to create something delicate and pristine.
I majored in Italian Studies with a Book Studies Concentration at Smith College, and graduated Cum Laude in 2014. These two areas of study dovetailed beautifully—I studied the book arts and typography under legendary book artist Barry Moser, and the history of book arts and special collections from Professor Martin Antonetti, an innovator in the field. I spent my Junior year living in Florence, Italy, where I did an internship at the Uffizi Library. After my scholastic year ended I spent four additional weeks traveling throughout Italy as a recipient of Smith's Blumberg Fellowship, serving as Professor Antonetti's eyes and hands as I went from library to library, examining the printed works of 16th-century calligrapher and printer Ludovico degli Arrighi.
All of this experience helped give focus to a love of letterforms as art. What started as classroom doodles of words has developed into a profession of chalkboard lettering and logo design. I am fascinated with the interplay of form and content, and the permeable webs we've woven between styles and eras of design. I like to think of myself as an analogue artist born out of the digital age.