She lives in our bathroom, spins her webs, and bothers no one. She’s fine. It’s her prospective mates climbing over my neck in the night that I am not too keen on. They have a terrible sense of direction! This portrait of Natasha will be going into one of my notebooks. I’ve made a few with birds on the fly pages. Now it’s time for something a little different to go inside.
These books, along with more of my typed artworks will be on my table at a local craft market next month.
(The woman at the till was so pleased that I was buying the typewriter. She told me she had taken a Pitman’s typing course, many years ago, and had struggled on a “big old huge thing” )
Edit: the hashtag is hard to find on typewriters in the U.K. I realise some readers might be confused about why I was so happy with the typeset!
What I want every person to remember about Shere Hite is not the paraphrasing of an undeniably sexist ad campaign, but the monumental body of work she completed over her lifetime which allowed women ( and by extension the people those women chose to have sex with) all over the world to have nicer, better, more enjoyable and satisfying sex lives. She changed things up, for the better, by first giving women a voice through her work, helping to eradicate shame and embarrassment about something perfectly normal and healthy. She opened up the idea that we could redefine what sex meant to us through our own diverse desires. The questionnaire she initially sent out in the early seventies seems out of date in places where it centres on heterosexual relationships and marriage, but you have to allow that as a given, most people would not talk openly about sex, or name the parts of their bodies or even necessarily know their bodies in intimate detail at the time. However, if you take a look at the questionnaire it is still incredibly relevant in 2020. I took the time to type up all the questions relevant to me, and answered them in full. The penultimate question says, “Is there anything on your mind you would like to speak about which was left untouched by the questionnaire? If so, please add it here.” Whenever the opportunity to re-evaluate comes along, I say take it, and don’t worry how long you take. Thank you, Shere Hite. Sisters are still doing it for themselves.
Shere Hite, writer, sex researcher, legend. Obituary in the guardian well worth a read. Disappointing that her work is so hard to get hold of in hard copy at the moment but digital formats are available. The free sample of The Hite Report available on the Apple Books app includes the questionnaire used for The Hite Report in full.
Shere Hite modelled for an ad campaign by Olivetti. The strapline was, “The typewriter that’s so smart she doesn’t have to be” She was not impressed. I’m not including a copy of that picture here, for two reasons: I can’t find it, and I wouldn’t anyway. We can all be intelligent enough to hug our own Olivettis these days.
Herring gulls, a composite sketch made over a few days from observation and memory. Window gazing and walks on the windy beach. They’re a bit of a pest sometimes but I’m fond of these birds
Who knew typewriter keys were the perfect drying rack for small prints?
Typed on Olympia SM3, 14cpi
Type The Clouds 