A Hobbyist Halftime Snack: Visual Art from Celia Hollander
Cursive fonts, chess drawings, and more
Water marbling by Celia Hollander
If you did your homework and read my conversation with Celia Hollander (Hobbyist #3, for those keeping score at home), you’d know that the composer spends a lot of time drawing, moving ideas from her head to paper.
The first example we discussed was water marbling, which she got into this past summer and eventually became so good at that she used the practice to create the cover art for her brilliant 2024 album Perfect Conditions. The lead image for today’s newsletter? That’s some water marbling.
Another visual art medium for Hollander? Fonts! She explained: “I bought paper and micron pens and have been drawing a lot. I don’t know if this is considered a hobby, but I have a font that I made. It’s an uppercase continuous cursive thing. I made it up so that I could write secretly in a journal and no one can read it.” Remember: all activities can be hobbies, people! Check out an exaggerated rendition of of her cursive font below.
Celia was extremely kind in passing along plenty of other examples from her portfolio, and rather figure out more ways to subtly introduce them to the body of this post, I have noticed that Substack offers a “gallery” option for photos, so I’ll pop that in below and you can just check out the rest of Hollander’s work below. As you can see with your own damn eyes, these are really, unbelievably, entirely cool.
*Columbo voice* Just one more thing. I was a guest on
’s “Nowhere Fast” podcast. It was an honor to chat with him about being a writer, The Hobbyist, my mom, Lupe Fiasco, , , , golf, hockey, and much more. Please give it a listen below and tell a friend to subscribe to The Hobbyist. Thank you much,