“Some of Tom’s Typewriters,” one of two related exhibitions now on view at The Church in Sag Harbor, had its genesis a year and a half ago when Eric Fischl, a co-founder of The Church, saw “California Typewriter,” a documentary about people in that state who collect typewriters.
Tom Hanks was featured prominently in that film, and, because The Church does one show a year on material culture — previous ones featured guitars and bicycles — Mr. Fischl contacted Mr. Hanks through a mutual friend.
“Tom very enthusiastically agreed to do the show,” said Sheri Pasquarella, The Church’s executive director. “Eric introduced me and our exhibition coordinator, Joe Jagos, to Tom. Much of the legwork was facilitated through Tom’s office, but Tom was and remains engaged with the show. He selected all the works himself, and he did a Zoom with Simon Doonan, Joe, and me. He’s been really great.”
Mr. Doonan, a renowned creative director and author with a home on Shelter Island, came on board to design the show. “I’m in the same tai chi class as Eric,” Mr. Doonan explained. “We talked about what was going on at The Church, and he said, ‘You used to do displays, didn’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, Women’s Wear Daily used to call me “the diminutive doyen of displays,” ’ ” a title earned in part through Mr. Doonan’s 33 years as creative director at Barneys New York.
But wait, there’s more. Concurrent with “Some of Tom’s Typewriters” is “Some Odes: Sam Messer With Paul Auster, Eleanor Gaver, Denis Johnson, and Sharon Olds,” an exhibition that focuses on the confluence of ideas between artists and artistic media as they flow within the creative community. The link between the shows? Over the past 28 years Mr. Messer has created over 200 paintings of typewriters.
Mr. Fischl was familiar with “The Story of My Typewriter,” a book by the late writer Paul Auster with illustrations by Mr. Messer, and with “Some of Tom’s Typewriters” already in the works, the book suggested a possible complement. But, while paintings of typewriters figure in “Some Odes,” the show is more fundamentally about Mr. Messer’s relationships with Auster, Denis Johnson, like Auster a celebrated writer, Sharon Olds, a poet, and Eleanor Gaver, a filmmaker and Mr. Messer’s wife.
Mr. Messer met Johnson, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Award winner who died in 2017, while both were in residence at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center in 1981. The two collaborated with Ms. Gaver on “One Man by Himself,” a book about the self-taught painter Jon Serl with text by Johnson and Mr. Messer’s portraits of Serl.
They joined forces again on “Denis the Pirate,” a bedtime story written in 1993 by Johnson for his goddaughter, Jo Messer, Sam and Eleanor’s daughter. Ten years later, when the story was published in The Paris Review, Mr. Messer made some ink drawings to illustrate it. Then, between 2011 and 2017, he made more than 1,600 etchings for what became an 11-minute animation of the story, with narration by Liev Schreiber and music by Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld.
Johnson’s wall in the exhibition includes a couple of portraits by Mr. Messer, two typewriter paintings related to Johnson, and two framed typed works by the writer: “A Song About Sam Messer,” from 1982, and handwritten text that had been on Johnson’s studio wall in Provincetown.
It was the book about Jon Serl that led Mr. Messer to Auster in 1996. “Denis wrote the introduction, but it needed a blurb and I didn’t know any other writers,” Mr. Messer said on a phone call from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. A mutual friend gave Mr. Messer Auster’s address. “I wrote him a letter, and I got a letter back. He loved the book and there’s a blurb on the back from him.”
Auster invited Mr. Messer to come visit the next time he was in Brooklyn. Portraits are also central to Mr. Messer’s work. “I would just paint people and the tools they used to make things. So when I met Paul I asked if I could see where he worked, then if I could come back and paint his typewriter.” That was Mr. Messer’s first typewriter painting.
Auster’s installation includes a portrait of the writer, two typewriter paintings, a handwritten one-paragraph story about his first typewriter, and several typed pages from the longer version of the book.
Mr. Doonan welcomed the opportunity to design “Some of Tom’s Typewriters” in part because, “Since I became a writer, I leap at opportunities to do three-dimensional work. I also thought it was really quirky and insane and interesting that Tom Hanks has this monumental collection. A lot of guys in his position collect vintage guitars, but collecting typewriters is pretty idiosyncratic.”
That may be, but the film “California Typewriter,” which will be shown at The Church on Saturday, not only celebrates the machine, it also features, in addition to Mr. Hanks, John Mayer, Sam Shepard, and David McCullough, typewriter enthusiasts all. And it includes the Boston Typewriter Orchestra, which will perform at The Church on Feb. 1.
In addition to the typewriters, which are enclosed in clear vitrines to protect them from dust, Mr. Doonan added another dimension to the installation by searching online for vintage typewriter advertisements. He tracked down permissions and had massive reproductions made that activate the walls of the room.
He also put together a crazy installation, suspended from the gallery’s ceiling, comprising upside-down wastebaskets from which colorful typewritten sheets of paper, some crumpled, cascade toward the typewriters below.
In one corner of the gallery is a rolling video of footage involving typewriters from public service programs and movies. “We all chatted about it,” Mr. Doonan said. “Obviously we all said yes to ‘The Shining.’ “ Another famous clip, from “Ready, Willing, and Able,” shows Ruby Keeler and Lee Dixon dancing up and down on the keys of a massive typewriter, while the legs of a chorus of dancers simulate typebars.
“It’s the sound of the 20th century, the clacking of typewriters,” said Mr. Doonan. “Bills, death threats, love letters, film scripts, books, everything. Clack, clack, clack. Typing changed people’s lives,” including those of his parents, who learned to type after serving in World War II. “We always had a typewriter in the house. Typing saved their bacon.”
Every machine in the exhibition has a story. One outlier among the manual machines is an IBM Selectric, designed by Eliot Noyes between 1962 and 1973, whose replaceable typeball displaced the typebars. The model in the exhibition was seen on “Mad Men.”
Swintec, one of the last typewriter companies still in business, has survived because of prisons. The company produces electric models with clear plastic cases that securely cover everything but the keyboard. Prisons allow Swintecs because the case prevents inmates from hiding contraband.
The red Olivetti Valentine, designed by Ettore Sottsass, a notable Italian architect and designer, was unveiled on Valentine’s Day in 1969. While Sottsass pitched it to the company as an egalitarian machine that could be produced cheaply, Olivetti wasn’t interested in making an inexpensive machine. However, the machine was iconic enough to become part of the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. Like several others in the show, the Valentine is signed by Mr. Hanks.
One of Mr. Messer’s most recent typewriter paintings, “Ulysses,” from 2022, was inspired in part by time the artist spent in Greece. The typewriter keys are stones Mr. Messer brought back from that country, and are an homage to the painter Jack Whitten, who spent many summers working in Crete and incorporated stones into his work.
“It has nothing to do with any of the writers in the show,” Ms. Pasquarella said. “I thought of the painting as the journey, like Ulysses. Sam as an artist going through this journey where he is encountering all these people and accumulating all their stories and then winding up at a place of self-discovery.”
The depiction of the typewriter in his work has evolved from a reference to specific individuals to, in Mr. Messer’s words, “a form that innately represents language, communication between peoples, its association with both facts and fiction, the place where stories are recorded and invented.”
“California Typewriter,” a 2016 documentary by Doug Nichol set for Saturday at 6 p.m., honors the machine while also documenting the struggles of the typewriter repair shop of the title. Tickets are $20, $15 for members.
Both exhibitions will run through March 10.
