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Though she gravitated early in life toward writing, Kelye Kneeland doesn’t use her extensive collection of typewriters to tell stories — at least not in the conventional sense.

Since 2018, the Bellevue teacher has made use of her impressive stockpile to create vivid, strikingly photorealistic portraits. Now encompassing more than 100 pieces that take between 20 and 40 hours each to complete, Kneeland’s body of work includes subjects from Eddie Vedder to Aretha Franklin, from Amelia Earhart to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For Kneeland, asperands and ampersands are analogous to a painter’s use of different brushes; a given portrait might feature the handiwork of up to eight typewriters, no different from a drawing’s use of disparately shaded and sized pencils to achieve certain shadows and contours.

Read the rest of the feature on 425.