- Hex Sign: n.
- Any of various painted round signs incorporating designs, such as stylized stars, rosettes, or wheels, thought to be magical. These signs were painted on barns, especially by the Pennsylvania Dutch, to ward off misfortune or evil spells.
- Fraktur: n.
- A folk art form practiced by Pennsylvania Germans principally from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. The name derives from that of a distinctive German script marked by "fractured" pen strokes and the form has clear roots in European folk culture. Fraktur blossomed into a uniquely rich, colorful and iconographic form of expression in the United States, tied to rites of social life.
The following is NOT an in depth study of Hex Signs but where I am coming from with my Art work. See bottom for web links to sites that can give you more information on Traditional Hex Signs.
- Acknowledgement of the Fantastic:
- Witches, Monsters and Ghosts, Oh My.
- I love a good schpook story. One that leaves you wondering if that scratching on the window really is something trying to get in. Fairy tales, folk lore, ghost stories, supernatural and horror literature all spark my curiosity.
- As a child I always loved Autumn and Halloween. I remember my parents watching the Saturday afternoon creature features and I would go sneaking to watch the movies instead of taking my afternoon nap. Magic and monsters just fueled my imagination. There are many crayon drawings from my childhood of haunted houses and Godzilla like dinosaurs.
- I also remember going for rides in the countryside and seeing large barns decorated with stars. There was curiosity and wonder as to what they were. As I got older I started researching local ghost stories and folk tales of Berks County. I never knew how unique southeast Pennsylvania was.
- There are different schools of thought when it comes to Hex Signs. The first school of thought thinks that they are good luck charms. They are to bring happiness, good fortune and bountiful crops. The other school states that they were used as a cultural identity to announce that the owner of the farm was of Germanic decent. Most of the barn paintings were of stars and rosettes. Birds, flowers and unicorns were motifs found on Dutch birth and marriage certificates.
- I started out as a woodblock printmaker. I studied the German and Japanese Masters. Folk tales and ghost stories were major themes in the works of these artists. My love for the spooky, strange and unusual became my engine.
- I started to ponder what it would be like to have a Hex Sign to keep away the things that go bump in the night. Then I pondered the opposite. What would a Hex Sign look like to call up something to go bump in the night?
- Hex signs have been associated with magic circles. What would it conjure up? What would it attract?
- Then there were the Dutch heaven letters, birth and marriage certificates or Fraktur. Folk art with flowers and fantastical beasts.
- Instead of distelfinks and tulips, I want to do ravens and poppies. Dragons and irises. Symbols, ideas and imagery taken from the original hex sign and fraktur designs mixed with my personal research.
- My personal research into freemasonry, alchemy and esoteric texts add to the pallet of symbology in my prints to illustrate unwritten personal folk lore.
- They are carpet pages from a yet undiscovered grimoire.
- I took these influences and ideas and went digital. Producing new designs in Illustrator and Photoshop and printing them photographically so that the detail and colors would be as I imagine them.
Click below to go on to My Hex Signs:
