New art project

Recently we went on vacation, during which I had enough downtime to read, and subsequently, think. And so I came up with a great new art project.

I'm going to recreate / design / illustrate / typeset the entire original scroll of "On The Road". I found the characters to be more real, complicated and interesting in this original version, and thought it would make one fun art project. Here's what I'm planning (if this comes out before I'm done with it I will be pissed. Find your own inspiration.):

The covers will be illustrated front and back. Front will be a Jack of Hearts, representative of Keroac and his continuous quest for friendship and love in the book. Back will be Jack of Spades, representative of Neal Cassady, a.k.a. Dean Moriarty, Keroac's friend, fellow traveller, and in many respects "other half". Two sides of the same coin, in some respects. This I'm planning on hand-illustrating in pen and ink; much research is being done on not only images of the two men, but also the playing cards themselves, symmetry, symbolism and style.

The pages will be one continuous scroll, folded into pages (like an accordion fold). The book will be bound at the top, reporter-style, so that the reader can flip through the pages over and over in that scrolling vertical format, yet the pages will be sewn / bound so that they will be accessible without falling out all over the place.

I'm going to find an old typewriter, hopefully from the 1940's or 50's on which I hope to type this entire book. Chapter pages will be handwritten with cross-outs, pages will be typed with cross-outs or white-out or whatever, maybe even with some penciled circles emphasizing some points. Page numbers will be handwritten in edition format (for example, page 3 would be 3/100).

The primary challenges are finding paper and finding a typewriter that works. I'll have to do some hunting, but hopefully I will find what I need. I suppose I could just print it and typeset it on the computer, but I think it would lose the character I'm looking for. I'm planning on connecting reams of paper with scotch tape - that old yellowed kind, if I can find it.

I think this will make one cool art peice. I'd love to see it properly published - letterpressed instead of typed - but I really do not have that kind of money and I certainly don't want to hand the idea over to someone else who won't keep my vision in mind. So, a one-off it will be.

I also came up with a great calligraphic poster idea after reading "The Baseball Codes", but that's going to take a lot more time.

Update: As usual, it's already been done. Perhaps I"ll just stick with the illustrations. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/07/27/kerouacs_road_will_be_unrolled/