I got the chance to visit the studio of one of my favorites in both graffiti and fine art this last summer in New York. His collage work, his graffiti, and his work space are overflowing with typographic inspiration, excellent line quality, and tons of personal style. Without much introduction needed, Greg Lamarche is a lettering champ and you should keep an eye on his work.
Most everything gets cut up. In some cases the materials are too precious or rare to cut up so I store them in books and mainly use them for reference. That said I’ve been lucky to come up on multiples sometimes so I can save one or two copies and blaze through the rest to put in my work
In your pieces you can tell that you pay a lot of attention to detail in the letter structure, describe your sketching process for making letters...
I sketch everyday and I’m always working on compositions and new connections for making my own letters as well as working out ideas for my collage work. Symmetry is one if not the most important thing to me whether constructing a single letter or a cluster of letters. For me it has to have some balance even if the organization of the letters tapers off in one direction and another section is particularly dense.
How much you can do with it. Abstracting, fragmenting and the negative spaces they create are some things I’m attracted to. The letter E is particularly sexy in that there seem to be endless ways to interpret it and you can bend it into almost anything.
Early on I was really influenced by Kurt Schwitters and how he made collages but also how he incorporated fragments of text into the compositions. Can’t think of any specific typographers but I was really into Roger Dean and the way he designed and connected letters. He had a very unique style that was not graffiti but shared some of the same attributes.
It goes without saying that the lettering in comic books was also a huge influence for me as well as rock band logos. For the most part I was influenced by the graffiti I saw growing up. People like Dondi, Lee, Baby 168, Rab Cac, just to name a few were masters of creating original letters and when I was a toy I definitely looked up to them for inspiration.
Greg Lamarche | 12oz Prophet Blog
Greg Lamarche | Show and Tell Gallery
Greg Lamarche | Facebook
Interview and photographs by Kel Troughton, all writing and photographs may not be reproduced without permission of Expresh.com and your boy Greg Lamarche, Reblog this for days but cite your sources dogs. Expresh.com 2012
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