Calligraphy Northwest: Pillars of Reed

It has taken some time to digest the tour de force that was Calligraphy Northwest, which took place last week at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. It was the 31st of these conferences, but my first foray. The Portland Society for Calligraphy, led by Carol DuBosch and Meri Taylor, did a stellar job of running the event---which had a lot of moving parts and a dream team faculty---without a visible hitch. There are not enough hours in the day to report on the full experience, but a few things float to the surface at the moment.

The campus is lush and stunning, and more than a few referred to its vibe as "Hogwartsian".

There was much focus on the life and work of Lloyd Reynolds, initially an English professor at Reed who taught himself Italic from a copy of Johnston's Writing and Illuminating and Lettering, and slipped calligraphy into the curriculum circa 1948, initially as "alphabetic communication"! The class was an enormously popular course (up to 80 in a class!) which he taught until 1970.  The movement spread to the Portland schools and contributed a national revival of the art form. Ironically, calligraphy was forced out of the curriculum a few years after Reynolds' death.  Nevertheless, his influence is felt on the campus and beyond--there are scribes, type designers, and poets who still speak of him with reverence-- and a quiet "calligraphy initiative"is afoot at Reed today.  It was not unusual to see subtle references to Reynolds' legacy about campus, i.e. the attribution for this omnipresent font (one of many designed by his former students).

Lower right says "Lucida typeface designed by Chuck Bigelow '67"

There were a number of conference attendees who studied with Reynolds, and he clearly was a dynamic force and a man of strong opinions.

Presumably it was his association with Roman cap scholar Father Edward Catich that resulted in the elegant lettering on the lintels of several buildings, notably Eliot Hall where Reynolds held court in the third floor lecture hall.

Some better shots of his work on the old dorm block:

In honor of the conference, there were exhibitions of the work of both men in the college library, a charming meld of old and new buildings.

Some Catich stonework was on loan from the Portland Art Museum, so we got a closer look at the carvings and their preliminary brushwork.

The red letters are Trajan;  the blue letters did not exist in the Roman alphabet,
and were presumably of Catich's invention.

Catich established that the Trajan letterforms were the result of
brush or reed work, later carved into the stone.

I'm crazy for ampersands, but I have to say, the date on the stone below was my very favorite detail!

A Gift of Grid

How cool is this?!?  Our fellow pen enthusiasts at Scribblers, "across the pond",  have come up with this genius tool.  And what's more, it's free!  Just go here, choose your settings, and you're good to go in a matter of seconds. Thank you, friends!

Kalligraphia 13

San Francisco Public Library

My whole family went with me to the opening reception for Kalligraphia 13 last Saturday!  Okay, I had to bribe them with lunch beforehand...but they were gracious and enthusiastic while I oohed and aahed over the amazing, varied, and outstanding work of my SF Friends of Calligraphy colleagues.

I'll never forget the thrill, six years ago, of seeing my Letters of Note exemplar displayed in the Kalligraphia 11 exhibit!  The show happens every three years, but I missed Kalligraphia 12 during the year I couldn't hold a pen due to adhesive capsulitis (frozen shoulder).  It was good to be back.

I came upon my piece, Grace, close to the entrance in a case right next to (gulp) the venerable Thomas Ingmire.  Susie Taylor--gifted calligrapher, Harrison Collection curator, and overseer of the exhibit---made sure I knew that show placement had to do only with where the pieces fit physically, not with comparative artistry.  Well, duh!  Lucky for me, they let anyone in...

 

Also sharing "our" display case was Ann Miller, who had been my teacher for a summer course in 2004 at the Academy of Art University, a fantastic overview of pretty much the whole history of calligraphy.  That foundation has served me well. Thank you, Ann!

Ann & Lance Miller

Seems as if six years ago I was just getting going with pen and ink, a stranger in a strange land;  this time I was delighted at how many of the artists I knew, and how many of the pieces I had seen in process during various classes and workshops.  Case in point, Ruth Korch's Hyacinths for the Soul from the Liesbet Boudens weekend last August:

Ruth Korch (top)

I didn't attend the Lisa Engelbrecht workshop last summer but wish I had!  Here's Carla Tenret's piece on fabric:

Carla Tenret

I've never met Marsha Brady but I'm a big fan:

Marsha Brady 

A record 98 calligraphers are represented in the show.  If you're anywhere near the Bay Area before August 26, treat yourself to a visit.  If you go on a Saturday, you might catch a demo by one of the Friends of Calligraphy rock stars (see schedule here) from 2-4 pm.  In the meantime, you can see a lot more of the pieces in the album Raoul Martinez, talented calligrapher and ace photographer, has posted here!

Best in the Business

Sweet discussion this morning over Father's Day brunch:  my kids say that not every "father" is a "dad", and theirs is a gem and definitely a "dad"!

Hence this doodle on hot press paper:  Pitt marker and brush pens, pewter Derwent metallic pencil, gold pen, and gold leaf over Instacoll.  And the debut of my section liner!  Any irregularities due to user error...

Sayonara Sylvia

A longtime colleague is departing at the end of this week, and it is bittersweet for her as well as for those of us staying on.  For some time, she has wanted to teach at the same school her children attend--which will significantly simplify her life, we hope--but she has been with us for many years and we all feel like family.

She loves orange, and wears it well.  I wanted to make a going-away card for her that expresses both her favorite hue and the fire within her that makes her so strong and ambitious!  Inktense pencils, lightly brushed with water, give a flame-like feeling.  For the ornamentation, I remembered learning from Harvest Crittenden how lovely it is to combine gold leaf and shell gold (see the halo in this post);  this is the "poor man's version" with gold leaf over Instacoll, and painted Finetec gold and silver.  I love the dimensional look it gives!

The shadows on the Sickels lettering are Zig gray suede (a heretofore under-appreciated brush pen that has patiently awaited attention in my studio) and HB graphite;  outlining is done with a fine-tip Pitt pen.  The paper is Crane's correspondence card, mounted on a piece of old greeting card (cut with deckle scissors), a piece of metallic gold (ditto), and a Fabriano Medioevalis card.  The final touch was a scattering of random crystals from Michaels, glued on.  Hope she likes it!

Engrossed in Graduation

Once again I was delighted to be asked to design a diploma for the graduating class of the school my kids attended oh-so-long-ago, and to work with the parents on the illumination while the eighth graders were off on their class trip.  The Engrossing Saga I attended last fall was still very much with me, and I went for a kind of turn-of-the-twentieth century look with a twist: part color, part black-and-white.  

The idea is to keep it simple enough that the group can complete the painting in a three-to-four-hour crash course in engrossing.  The design was hand-drawn (Sickels alphabet), calligraphed (Johnstonian Italic), scanned and cleaned up in Photoshop (both twenty-first century luxuries), and inkjet-printed on New Diploma Parchment, whose praises I must join the chorus and sing!  I inscribed the names in Copperplate with Moon Palace Sumi, chose a gouache palette and mixed the colors.  For the gold we used Spectralite, which held up nicely to burnishing and tooling.  Outlining was done with a fine black Pitt pen, and leaf vein dots with a gold gel pen.

We settled into the classroom for a Sunday afternoon and several hours later...

...nineteen diplomas, ready for signatures!

It always amazes me to think that one could actually make a living as an engrosser back in the day!  If only I'd been born in the 1800s--and male, of course--this would have been the profession I aspired to.  Sigh.

A Sphinx @ Sixty

So, I turned 60 today!  I'm feeling pretty great about it, despite a young mom at work telling me she couldn't believe I was that old because I'm so "spry".  Ouch.

Anyway, I've had a great day, taking off from work and spending the morning in San Francisco to visit the stunning Cult of Beauty exhibit at the Palace of the Legion of Honor which includes, among multitudinous other treasures, many original William Morris drawings, fabrics and wallpapers.  More peacock feathers and acanthus leaves than you can shake a nib holder at!

Afterward, at the legendary Greens for lunch, we enjoyed great food and a great view (yep, that's our Golden Gate Bridge, turning 75 on May 27th...and I guess she's pretty spry too).

Then my sweet husband presented me with THE coolest gift ever!  You can tell you've been with someone more than half your life when he knows you would be over the moon to receive one of these:

Whatever is it, you might ask?  (The waiter at Greens did!)

Well, have you ever wondered how the old penmen did those amazing perfectly-spaced lines for shading and definition in black-and-white, like this

or this?

Bookplate, 1900

Many used a now-antique drafting tool called a Sphinx Section Liner, also known as a parallel ruler.

They've been very hot items on eBay since pointed pen people caught on to them, sometimes going for several hundred dollars apiece.  Michael Sull demonstrated one (which had been a gift to him from Harvest Crittenden) at the Engrossing Spencerian Saga last October.  I showed Bob Hurford's write-up on the subject (IAMPETH Penman's Journal Summer 2010) to Bruce and he was fascinated with how it worked.  Who knew what he was doing out there in his shop these last few weeks?

Is it not a thing of beauty?!?  Gorgeous, smooth-as-silk fiddlehead maple and elegant brass parts, the straightedge raised just enough to avoid smudging, and finished off with a beautiful engraved plaque.

Of course I had to try it out as soon as we got home!  The old masters would have used a ruling pen (another must-have drafting tool) but I went with a G-Tec for my first try.  In the photo I'm kind of using it upside-down and backwards, but as Sheila Waters is fond of reminding me, we left-handers 'have to figure out our own way of doing things'.  Of course, it works perfectly!  And I will treasure it always.

I think sixty might be my new lucky number.