Buzz Spector is an artist, writer, and art editor of december magazine. Spector’s art makes frequent use of the book, both as subject and object, and is concerned with relationships between public history, individual memory, and perception. His most recent exhibition, of works on/of paper, “Buzz Spector: Alterations,” was on view at the Saint Louis Art Museum (November 20, 2020—May 31, 2021), and he has also had solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago; Orange County Museum of Art; Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA; and many private galleries and alternative spaces. In 1978, Spector was one of the founding editors of WhiteWalls: a magazine of writings by artists, editing the publication until 1987. Since then, he has written critical reviews and essays for many magazines and journals, including American Craft, Artforum, Art in America, and New Art Examiner. Spector’s more experimental writing has appeared in various journals and reviews since the 1970s, including Benzene, Café Solo, POSIT, River Styx, and WhiteWalls.
Since 2002 Spector has incorporated words and phrases in works of handmade paper. Some of this writing is done with the use of stencils, but most is in a cursive script made by using lengths of yarn. The qualities of hand writing, applied to sheets of paper in various fibers, makes letterforms related to gesture rather than typography. Language arising from a body instead of a machine.