Maintenance, February 2022 - Pen and Ink on Bristol paper, 11x14»

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An inspiration for this image is the French word “maintenant” meaning “now”.

Maintenance is the act of keeping things in the now.
Maintenance can come from a place of care, but mostly likely it indicates a desire to exert control.

Maintaining a friendship, maintaining a building, maintaining pressure on a wound, maintaining the economy, maintaining global warming beneath 2° celsius, maintaining the status quo, maintaining a regime, maintaining friendly relations between nations (especially when one of them benefits from it.)

Maintenance is the act of keeping things as they are. It’s not about changing them for the better. With time, entropy and what my friends call the PFH, ‘Le Putain de Facteur Humain’ (Fucking Human Factor), things have a tendency to get worse, barely noticeable until they fall apart.

This picture is pretty straight forward. As long as we focus on keeping things to stay the same as “now”, we won’t allow the future to exist.

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This piece was a part of Typeforce 12 in March 2022, an annual celebration of contemporary typography in Chicago.