Philip Bell is an artist who blends printmaking methods with software engineering to explore graphic design and geometric abstraction. Bell has practiced experimental letterpress printmaking since 2007, a hands-on process that later became the basis for a generative art practice.
Staccato (2022), released on Art Blocks as an edition of 200 unique works on September 16, 2022, translates Bell's letterpress process into code. Its shapes are drawn from basic elemental symbols common in letterpress studios, and features called margin unlock and pressure axis mirror the way letterpress type is locked into a printing bed. The collection's high-contrast, monochrome forms make positive and negative space dissolve, so the eye reads rows and columns the way it might read sheet music. The title refers to the musical term for notes played sharply detached from one another, matching the collection's contrast between figure and ground.
