Script, cursive, block letters, bold face, round, tall, squat—my handwriting has scribbled its own timeline from kindergarten worksheets to college application essays. As each grade passed, my style of penmanship changed. I graduated from the stark, linear scrawl of first grade to the puffy, rounded A’s of middle school, sometimes trying out a spiraled Y here and there or the occasional overdramatic S.
My calligraphy has streamed from number two Ticonderogas with faded rubber grips, a rainbow assortment of glittering gel pens, oversized highlighters, and a lucky mechanical pencil that is missing an eraser. Letter styles transformed as my friend groups did and my signature was influenced by those of my parents. Always legible but always distinct, my handwriting seems to have paralleled the different portions of my life, a scribbled representation of the stages of Sarah Moore.
More artistic than my notes, the handwriting of the greater Boston area has been given its own page to scrawl across. John Clemenzi, property manager of the Clemenzi Industrial Park in Beverly, Mass., began allowing street and studio artists to paint on his building’s rear wall nearly a dozen years ago. Beginning the project as a way to end the area’s graffiti problem, over the past decade the walls have transformed from a conglomeration of tags to a lively mural, covered in vivid colors and distinct shapes—a work of art.
This concept of legally sanctioned graffiti is not unique to Beverly. What is usually considered an act of vandalism is accepted as an art form on special streets and back alleys across the world. Zurich, Taipei, London, and New York are just a few of the cities that designate specific areas dedicated to the street art, all of which aim to encourage the growth of this modern painting style.
Just across the Charles, the presence of legal street art has become a popular tourist attraction. Hidden within the public, open-air walkway in Central Square, Richard B. Modica Way has become a sort of Mecca for both local and accomplished graffiti artists. The bright brick walls of the walkway are perpetually dripping with rainbows of wet paint as artists constantly add their own vibrant scrawl to the accidental mural.
The pictures and symbols that dance across Clemenzi’s brick wall and along Modica Way are not unlike my own academic graffiti. Although my handwriting covers the pages of spiral notebooks instead of the walls of a city, both are art forms in a certain way.
The layers of past tags function as backgrounds for new art, each telling their own story but combining into a whole unique to the culture of their city, like the letters that make up my writing.
Now, if one analyzed my tall and skinny script, you would see high school classmates in the S’s that I write from bottom to top. You could trace my indistinguishable lower case r’s (that are somehow always mistaken for u’s) back to rushed thank you letters and party invitations. In my straight-edged k’s you could see the newfound, collegiate attempt to be a real person that is inevitably disproved by the rounded g’s that have seen little change since I left Mrs. Doyle’s second-grade class. My E is my dad’s as much as my M is my mom’s—every letter of my alphabet its own layer of a handwriting that is distinctly me.
I have always been a supporter of script. Although the eloquence and permanence of smooth black ink overtakes the clumsiness of a pink rubber eraser more frequently as my note-taking years approach those of company listserves, I know that the future will only add new layers to my personal graffiti.
Featured Image by Breck Wills / Heights Graphic
