Pen-drawn calligrams based on the frequency and choice of words in President Obama’s inaugural address given on 20 January 2009. Inspired by the fervor of the moment and Obama's oblique references to Englishmen John Maynard Keynes, and the radical philosopher Thomas Paine.

The drawing used for the cover is based on the whole speech. For example: if we analyze the word frequency of the whole speech, ignoring common verbs, pronouns, prepositions and indefinite articles etc, we find the following words occur most often: nation (11), new (11), America (10). These are represented in the calligram by large red words. Words occurring four or eight times, e.g. people, spirit, today and God, are drawn in smaller blue letters, and black ink is used for all 171 words that occurred two or three times, e.g. peace, power, hope and prosperous. Words occurring only once were not used. Individual drawings are based on a portion of the text, all the words used in that selection are represented: red is used for a frequency ≥ 4, blue for ≥ 2 and black for words appearing once.

Edition details
Digitally printed with archival pigment inks on 180 gm BFK Rives Velin Cuve. Fourteen illustrations Hand-sewn in Velin Cuve covers 32 pp, 8.5 x 5.5 inches (220 mm x 143 mm)

Published together with a verbatim transcript and Introduction (Solmentes Press, February 2009).
$100