Lee Littlewood's Page
Profile Information
- Current Home {City, ST}
- Portland, OR
- Attended HP {No, Attended, or Graduate}
- Graduate
- High School Graduation Year {yyyy}
- 1964
- June, January, or August
- June
- Elementary Schools Attended
- Ray School/Chicago
- Education after High School
- BA Reed College, some art courses
- Business
- Since 1973: Lee's Better Letters, a one-man sign shop
- Spouse
- Ann
- Kids {Name, Birth Year; ...}
- Daniel & Jesse
- Biography
- Below is from a 1998 reunion of Reed College description, but the info is still accurate. In fact, not much has changed, now that I look at it, only now I have less hair and paint fewer signs.<2015>
Lee Littlewood dba Lee’ Better Letters
As a signpainter he was known for his use of shading, often applied to a wet-brush, funky Roman letter. The family suggests contributions .../ oops, wrong letter. I’ve been writing obituaries for old signpainters for a while now, as the generation that taught me the trade ages and dies. In fact the whole trade is changing, some say dying, since the computer has allowed signs to be made without hand skills. In a minor way it’s like the change when the printing press was invented and the scribe was superceded. The scribe of course survived and in fact came back as the calligrapher, but the time of changing over from handwork to machine production must have been tricky and I’m getting to see it firsthand in the signpainting world. Transitions are very interesting.
It was Lloyd Reynolds’ calligraphy class that pulled me into the world of letters, which is pretty much all I’ve done since Reed. I wasn’t a very good calligrapher, but being a signpainter is more like being a plumber - brilliance isn’t important as long as you get the job done - and you still get to mess with letters and get paid for it. So that’s what I’ve done since 1972, and it’s still a gas. It’s interesting how many graphics and lettering professionals Reed (mostly through Lloyd) has produced, considering that it didn’t give much respect to technical skills.
In other news – got married (to Ann Parker ‘68) in the Reed chapel, bought a “starter” house in southeast Portland and helped starter a family (2 boys and a dog), moved to another house in northeast Portland and found that the boys were going off to college, the dog was getting foggy, and Ann and I are still doing fine. She’s had a much more interesting time than I : working at the Zoo for 12 years, then learning some computer skills and writing technical manuals for software, and finally managing a group of technical writers at Kaiser healthcare. Three jobs in 30 years – I’m sure our children will think of it as totally sedate, even though I see it as wild and reckless.
When I realized that it was getting late and I hadn’t gotten this letter written (shades of Hum papers) I went looking for the letter from the ‘93 reunion. But I couldn’t find it anywhere, and now it has become this brilliant bit of writing out on the edge of my memory – probably the best writing I’ve ever done. It was probably a nostalgic stroll with old friends and old memories, and may have wondered what would have happened if we all hadn’t gone to Reed. I don’t know about you, but I found my main squeeze and my lifework here, along with a whole bunch of friends and grass to play frisbee on, so I’m pretty happy about the whole deal.
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Hi Lee, yes, it's been a long time. I remember visiting you in Portland in 1968. I am now living in London and writing books about Russia. I'm divorced, have three kids and have produced three books. (I'm trying to finish a fourth.) It doesn't sound as if you come to Europe much but I'd be glad to see you. I'll keep in mind that you are there if I make it out again to Portland.
Best,
David
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