Monday, July 29, 2013

Summit at Colorado Springs

The International Calligraphy Conference - Summit, took place in Colorado Springs last week.  It was a wonderful week of learning and camaraderie.  What a beautiful venue at Colorado College.
I took the 5 1/2 day workshop with the famous Calligrapher Brody Neuenschwander brodyneuenschwander.com.  I had heard so much about him, especially the part about everyone crying in his class.  I wasn't sure if it was his teaching style or if he was a task master and strict.  I thought he was wonderful.  He seemed to be genuinely interested in what you had to say and had such wonderful creative ideas to express what each of us wanted in the beginnings of our 'book'.  Not only did we have to delve into some of our emotions, that were sometimes suppressed and revealed through our tears, but we had to find a way to use our artistic abilities to convey those feelings.  It was a tremendous amount of work and no one finished, but now have an idea to continue to complete the stories.  Here are a few photos from the week.
Sunset towards Pikes Peak, walking to our apartment.

Brody showing how to abuse quill pens.

A lesson prompt for one of our pages.
Class photo of lucky students with Brody.

Front or first page,  I realize that I did not illustrate it correctly..but will work on it.  Right, 3 different scripts for each part of our stories.

following pages....I began a stitching with different color threads and sewn through X for Xesco and Y for Yuki...

Opposite side of embroidered and cut out frames page to reflect the view of the first pages..

The pages seem to come together serendipitously... this from being blind and having a partner to guide the placement of a tool but not the movement of it and tie into it our word prompt.

The right side of this layout was a prompt from Brody to slowly change two of our chosen words from out text.  The left side was my attempt to camouflage a badly written script to illustrate part of my story.

Part of my written text on the left and a word picked from my text on the right...I started with dirty sumi water and slowly made each letter lighter in color for the word 'nowhere'.

The left page, before,was an unsuccessful attempt at writing 'last dance' with watered sumi ink to show tears..but the letters all blended together.  It was Brody's suggestion to cut out stylized letters.  The right page was done with two different prompts by Brody .. seemingly not related to one another.

This photo is of two pages, one with the free script at the top (another prompt from Brody) and a cutout window at the bottom, and the other, a view of a painting of the bird.  Hidden is the written script of the explanation of this view on the same page as the full painting.

Here is the photo of the table of examples from our class at Show and Share...Everyone did exceptional work and I think very content at their attempts.
My invented letter form to show nervousness and fright.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

ArtSeed

ArtSeed is an organization to inspire and empower the young or underprivileged to realize their full potential and embrace diverse communities through participation in the arts.
Because of my Grandson, I became acquainted with ArtSeed and Josefa Vaughan, the Executive Director.  She requested that I may have something of art related to teach to young people.  I chose to teach them how to make their own pens out of printer's discarded litho plates or empty soft drink cans.  I also brought along sumi ink to try the pens out.  I was fortunate to have a friend, Greg Garcia of On Paper Inc, donate litho plates and lots of good paper.
Josefa Vaughan, executive director going over students plein aire work just before my class and mid morning hot chocolate.

The cola pen or soft drink can pen

The litho pen with written instructions I gave to each student.
The students for today's class.

These were the final finished note cards they made with embossed framing (additional lesson). I gave them an envelope so that they could used it to send or give away.  The pen exercise produced wonderful strokes and I think they were all pleased.