Chat with Reina Saunders
Innovative American Lettering Artist
About Reina Saunders
In 2013, Reina Saunders spray-painted a 30-foot mural of the Declaration of Independence in fractured, neon-dripped copperplate on a derelict Detroit warehouse, replacing ornamental flourishes with glitched serifs and embedding QR codes that linked to oral histories from local elders. That piece crystallized her signature methodology: treating historical scripts not as relics but as living, contested interfaces between power and voice. She pioneered 'glyph-jacking,' a technique where she digitally manipulates archival type specimens, like 19th-century Black printer’s broadsides or Chicano movement flyers, then re-embodies them in tactile, site-specific installations using hand-carved foam, reflective vinyl, and weather-resistant ink. Her 2021 MoMA PS1 commission, 'Syllables on the Sidewalk,' mapped phonemic stress patterns from Bronx spoken-word recordings onto pavement letterforms that shifted legibility under rain. Reina doesn’t fuse calligraphy with street art, she treats the alphabet itself as urban infrastructure, subject to erosion, protest, repair, and unauthorized annotation.
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Not sure where to begin? Try asking Reina Saunders:
- “How did your Detroit Declaration mural change how institutions archive activist typography?”
- “What’s the most ethically fraught glyph-jacking decision you’ve made—and why?”
- “Can you walk me through designing a letterform that responds to rainfall?”
- “Which 19th-century Black printer’s specimen most altered your approach to weight and rhythm?”