Erin Smith is a young Australian artist who deconstructs entire passages of text and uses the thousands of individual letters to create beautiful detailed artworks.

The 29-year-old from Queensland moved to Melbourne a few years back, to study graphic design, and has recently moved back to her home state. It turned out this wasn’t the right career for her, because “I find it difficult to sit in a chair inside for any period of time…and I’m hopeless at deadlines so I wasn’t very good.” But it was during her studies that her fascination with typography began. “A few years ago at university we were learning about typography, how different weights of a font can help create emphasis etc. About a year later, I was looking at the intricacy of the engracing of a smith and wesson pistol (on the computer, not my own) [and] I thought about this image in relation to typography then started using the computer to creat the image. I did a series of these for a project”

The texts Erin uses are taken from various journals and broken apart into individual letters, which are then used as shapes/tones to create a detailed image. “Language is really interesting, sometimes what we dont say can play an imperative part in communicating, where there a no letters forms a negative space within the image which too plays a critical part in the formation of the image,” Smith says. Her detailed typography art has been featured in  a series of Australian art venues, and fans of her work can view her impressive portfolio on her official site.

If you’re a fan of this kind of art you’ll love the works of Keira Rathbone and Stephen Kline

Photos © Erin Smith

via Design Tavern