Louise Marler, my friend the ‘Typewriter Artist’, sent me this story about herself… after I sent her an article in the Palisades Post featuring collector Steve Soboroff, whom she knows from the very small ‘typewriter world’.

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Louise Marler: She’s Our Type

Marler’s latest – Orson Welles’ typewriter

To enter the Santa Monica Airport studio of Louise “L.A.” Marler is to
enter a shrine to the art and power of print in its variety of forms – fine
art prints in many formats, greeting cards, T-shirts, pillows, book bags,
jewelry, even key chains.

But more than anything else, it is a temple of the typewriter –
old-fashioned, clanking, tactile machines that have produced
everything from great novels to heartbreaking love letters from
soldiers on the war front.

Marler’s infatuation with the typewriter dates back to her youth in
St. Louis, Mo., but it wasn’t until a few years ago that she channeled
that affection into her art. And the fruits of that romance have been
bountiful – large format to small fine art print gallery exhibits and
merchandise to “Type-Ins” to her newest project with one of the most
powerful and prominent businessmen and civic leaders in Los Angeles.

Marler – who has been teaching printmaking at SMC Community Education for three years – will be offering, for the first time, three summer camps for youth for three different age groups, including “Print Your Images Your Way,” Ages 9-12.

“Teaching gives me an opportunity to share my knowledge and technique,” she said. “It’s great to share and see how people put things together for themselves.”

Marler prints her artwork on T-shirts among other media

As for teaching young people, she says, “I feel, potentially, printing could become a lost art, and I want the next generation to experience something tactile and to see the results of what they are producing.”

It’s no surprise that Marler has such a deep connection to print and typewriters. Her grandfather was a typewriter repairman and her father the owner of an office equipment store. And from her mother, a home economics teacher, she inherited a love for fashion that she combined with printmaking when developing a successful print-on-demand T-shirt line.

But it wasn’t until about five years ago when visiting her parents and looking for a new project that she rediscovered her father’s treasure trove of old typewriters.

“My dad would take trade-ins so the more interesting machines collected in our home and now my parents have a barn-full of them,” she said.

Inspired by Pop Art and Andy Warhol, Marler takes photos of typewriters and manipulates them digitally to create bold images with simple text. The most popular of her limited edition prints features a red typewriter with yellow keys, above which simply says “Word.”

Other images – some featuring machines that date back as far as 1896 – have such inspiring text as “Keys to Success” and “What’s Your Story?” Others are sassy puns, including “Bang it, Sexy!” and “Talk QWERTY to me.” Still others are simple graphics dominated by text but with individual letters arranged to look like they are on old typewriter keys, such as “YOU ARE MY TYPE.”

Marler didn’t start out to be a printmaker. She graduated from South East Missouri State University with a business degree – which has since come in handy as an artist who is also running a commercial enterprise – and got her first job with the St. Louis Globe-Democrat “because I loved the idea of a huge press on the premises.”

A sci-fi theme is brilliantly captured in this print of Ray Bradbury’s typewriter.

“I have been in love with ink and paper since the beginning of when I
got to know it at the newspaper,” she said.

Later, she moved to Los Angeles and did marketing for a printer. In 1991 she started taking graphic design and creative writing courses at Santa Monica College and started creating logos and other graphics for various clients.

In the mid-1990s she bought a printing company in Santa Monica, and business was brisk in the economic boom. She sold her half of the company in the late 1990s and started her fine art publishing venture.

Her artwork has touched on themes other than typewriters – for example, she recently created “HI Infinity,” a Maui surrealism series of all original photographs digitally collaged, which are showing at Tranquility, a salon in Santa Monica. “My subjects of interest toggle between nature and industry,” she notes with a smile.

But it’s the world of words – she also has a deep appreciation for journalism and short stories and poetic writing – that has dominated her process and her success. Her “TypOwriter” series has led to community Type-Ins, including one at Beyond Baroque; an exhibit at the beautiful Rancho Mirage Library in conjunction with its first writer’s conference and the library’s purchase of four of her prints for its permanent collection; and her being featured in the documentary, “The Typewriter (In the 21st Century).

Perhaps most exciting, it led her to Steve Soboroff, a prominent civic leader and businessman who is the current President of the Los Angeles Police Commission and Chairman of the Board of the Weingart Foundation. It was through the documentary that Marler met Soboroff, who is an avid collector of typewriters, including ones used by Tennessee Williams, George Bernard Shaw, Ernest Hemingway and John Lennon.

Hi Infinity – a Maui surrealism series of digitally collaged photos.

Marler created two stunning prints featuring machines in Soboroff’s collection. The first is Ray Bradbury’s Royal, with ghostly fire-colored sci-fi images in the background and flames shooting up from the typewriter. The second features Orson Welles’ Underwood, with a hat floating above it and a repetition of “FAKE!” in the background, a reference to the filmmaker’s last major movie, “F for Fake.”

Soboroff gave permission to Marler to photograph the two famous authors’ typewriters on the condition that a portion of the sales goes to a journalism scholarship. She says she is delighted by the task since she has alwys been a fan of journalism.

Says Marler, “It’s been a great adventure to combine my love for the history of print communication with contemporary art, technology and education.”