A PIANO

An animated interpretation of "A Piano" by Gertrude Stein from her collection: Tender Buttons, originally published in 1914.

This animated calligraphic visualizes Stein’s description of a piano as an object – a description which is fairly abstract. Through the feel of ragtime piano rhythms, lines of calligraphy that suggest the turning of old player piano rolls and words that write on with the exaggerated gestures of dancers in early silent movies, this film also walks a fine line between readability and abstraction; something Gertrude might appreciate...

The supporting music is "Frog - I - More Rag" written by Jelly Roll Morton and recorded in 1918 (The recording is part of the album: Early Ragtime Piano from Folkways Records). There is a correspondence between the layered rhythms of ragtime piano, the repetition and sparse punctuation in Stein’s poem and layered lines of calligraphy written over time in front of our eyes.

All of the calligraphy for this animation began as pen and ink on paper written by Kathryn Darnell who is also the animator and illustrator of pianos.

A PIANO

From Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

If the speed is open, if the color is careless, if the selection of a strong scent is not awkward, if the button holder is held by all the waving color and there is no color, not any color. If there is no dirt in a pin and there can be none scarcely, if there is not then the place is the same as up standing.

This is no dark custom and it even is not acted in any such a way that a restraint is not spread. That is spread, it shuts and it lifts and awkwardly not awkwardly the centre is in standing.