Artist-in-residence: Tim Youd
02.06.2015 - 02.23.2015
Los Angeles-based artist Tim Youd has undertaken a project of retyping 100 classic novels, staging his performances at locations relevant to the author’s life or the plot of a novel. The project began in 2013 and continues in Kansas City for novels #30 and #31.
From February 6—23, Youd retypes the acclaimed novels Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge, written by Evan S. Connell and set in Kansas City in the years between the World Wars.
For Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge, Youd used the same make and model typewriter used by the author, an Olympia SM3, to retype each novel, a total of about 640 pages, on a single page of paper, backed by a second sheet. As the doubled page is cycled through the carriage again and again, the novel is rendered illegible. Upon completion, the two pages – a positive and a negative image – form a diptych, representing two pages of an open book.
To date, Youd has retyped 28 novels by noted authors including Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Tom Wolfe, Kurt Vonnegut, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, William Faulkner, and Philip K. Dick, in locations that include Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Indianapolis, Miami, San Diego, Oxford, MS, Pigget, AR, Dublin, and now Kansas City.
Evan S. Connell, Jr. (1924-2013) was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1941. The pair of novels were adapted for the 1990 film Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and shot in Kansas City.
Tim Youd: Mrs. Bridge & Mr. Bridge is organized by the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute. Mr. Youd was in residence at the Artspace from February 6 through 14, working on Mrs. Bridge (1959), and at the Central Library of the Kansas City Public Library February 17 through 23, working on Mr. Bridge (1969).
