Mysterious message at City Hall uses shorthand mostly ignored for decades
In the second-floor lobby of the sleek new Boynton Beach City Hall, a large wall sculpture makes a modern visual statement in this thoroughly modern building.
But what it is saying is a bit of a mystery.
Measuring 15 feet across and four feet high, the work is a graceful squiggle of intersecting lines in laser-cut aluminum, an abstract gesture suggestive of Picasso, its meaning elusive but pleasing to the eye. A figurative line drawing of a youngster falling off a skateboard, perhaps.
But some discerning viewers have recognized this layer of waves and curves as something else. They see a text message, in a language obscure and inscrutable. Even they are lost in its translation.
“Unfortunately I cannot read Gregg shorthand anymore— what does this say?” wrote Kayla Emerson in a comment under pictures of the work on the City of Boynton Beach Facebook page.
“I knew it was Gregg shorthand the second I saw it but no clue how to read it anymore, as I haven’t used it in nearly 40 years! What does it say?” wrote Stacy Carpentier Santarone.
Dating to the late 19th century, Gregg shorthand is a handwritten form of stenography— speed writing — that distills the phonetics of spoken words into a series of pen strokes. Once a staple of a typical public-school curriculum, it has been largely absent from classrooms for nearly four decades.
Boca Raton artist Stacey Mandell may be the only artist employing the elliptical strokes and slants of Gregg shorthand in her work. Mandell picked up the skill as a legal secretary, before she became a lawyer.
“You need to talk to your mother or your grandmother, OK?
Gregg shorthand is old school,” Mandell says, laughing.
A 50-something artist who wears her hair in a distinctive shade of purple, Mandell could write 160 words per minute in her shorthand heyday. With the advent of stenography machines, and the expanded use of recorders and computers, Mandell thinks she’s one of the last Gregg shorthand users around — though she does have a group of Instagram followers in India, where it is still taught. Mandell says her sculpture at the Boynton Beach City Hall needed to respond to the aesthetics of the new building, its setting adjacent to the new library and the diverse community thatwould be passing by.
“You don’t have to know what it says to appreciate it,” Mandell says. “But for people who can read it, they get excited. It’s beautiful. It’s part of who they were, as well where they are now. So it’s pretty cool.”
OK, but what does it say? Mandell explains: The sculpture includes two words (which she calls “forms”) that overlap where a vertical curve is intersected by a horizontal line.
The translation: “creative community.”
Nearby is a companion piece, a 5-foot-by-8-foot painting, that uses Gregg shorthand densely layered with paint, cursive text and Braille to tell an entire 4,800-word story about the history and culture of Boynton Beach. Shorthand, remember?
Boynton Beach City Manager Lori LaVerriere says her only experience with Gregg shorthand was seeing it used by some of her clerks, all now retired. She says Mandell’s work, communicating to different audiences on multiple levels, is perfect for display near the library.
“We just loved the concept of it. We hope it generates conversation, that people will ask about it,” she says. “The coolest part will be when people walk up and say,‘ Wow, what is that?,’ and then you talk about it.”