A New Toy

Friends of Calligraphy was fortunate to have Pat Blair, White House Calligrapher, come to give two workshops in San Francisco.  I was happy to get into the two day Copperplate Variations workshop.  The other workshop was Pointed Pen Sketchbook.  In both she showed the students the use of the wedge brush.  It is a three sided brush that can make fine to heavy lines with a push-pull of the brush. Check out her youtube video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coEMPv5zaVQ

This is the front cover of my folder that held exemplars and notes.  She made one for each of the students.  The two brushes, #12 and #6, are the wedge brushes she uses to make the floral part of the flourishes.  The pink comes from dipping the tip into red watercolor.

This is the close up of the flourish and the # 12 brush point.

This is my first attempt using only the #6 wedge brush and Dr. Martin's Pro White. I need to practice a lot.

The Burning Man postcards

Belonging to the Correspondence Co-op, the Co-op was fortunate to have one of the members James Cline take our postcards to Burning Man and have them cancelled stamped from the Burning Man Post Office.  Here are my two I made for the occasion.

BUSINESS MadMadeSF

On August 30, 2014, Monica Lee, her sister Tracy and I bought a table at the annual Zinefest. Here Tracy and Monica are waiting to get into the San Francisco County building in Golden Grate Park..

Monica showing how to make her mini origami book.  I followed with the envelope book.

Our two books that we taught.

We had 15 students. Students came in late but these were there first.  Lily (standing) was our great helper.

Here we are at our table. M for Monica and D for Dorothy, Made in San Francisco.  Monica's sister Tracy join us. We had a great time.

Calligraphy in Blossom with Marina Soria

 Marina Soria from Buenos Aires, Argentina, through the Society for Calligraphy, came to Pasadena to inspire and pass her expertise in developing letter forms from nature and flowers. Nineteen creative participants and I were lucky to be able to take this three day workshop.  Magic happened for all of us with our brush and pen strokes using sumi ink, walnut ink, and watercolors.  By the third and last day, we all made our garden books with our developed letter forms.  Everyone was successful.

Our first letter 'd' samples, after our initial stroke practice of an ikebana arrangement.

Chris and Janet doing their pieces

Chris Ewen's

part of JanetTakahashi's beautiful efforts

Marina showing Victoria suggestions

Victoria Kibildis

Sabina Bronner and her piece

Stephanie Chao with her piece

Nancy  Kazanjian piece

Jane Kim to finish

Audrey Kincaid's piece

Michelle Cabala's beautiful texture letter forms

Carrie Imai's work in progress...

smiling Debbie Powell and Kristi Darwick

Debbie Powell's piece

Kristi working on her piece

Barbara Close's garden book

Carole Johnson's piece

Wendy Watson-Dietrick

One of Britta Brice's pieces..she made three!

This is Audry Kincaid's piece...

My book with front cover I painted and wrapped with seam binding

back cover umwrapped

my letter forms with my attempt at haiku...gold brittle grasses cracking to the earth, another broom...

opened accordian..with a verse of mine..sew a thread of golden words to weft and warp of a paper loom, spin a yarn and weave a tapestry of collected memories....

Beautiful ladies who got to play with Marina Soria.  Muchas Gracias Marina!

Honorary Award from Ruth's Table

How wonderful and honored to receive an award from Ruth's Table and a certificate of recognition from the State Senate and Senator Mark Leno.

My daughters Yukiko and Miya attended the occasion with me at Art at the Table.  It was held at the beautiful City Club (has one of the murals of Diego Rivera) with a wonderful dinner and entertainment.  This event was also held to raise funds to further benefit different forms of art to bring the community across different ages of people together.

Here are the six honorees with Ruth's Table and Bethany House executives.. Lola Fraknoi, fourth from the left, was not holding hers.

Here I am with my daughters Miya and Yukiko.

John Stevens - Two Lines Intersecting (Interacting)

The Summer Workshop of Friends of Calligraphy had the good fortune of having master calligrapher, John Stevens give this years summer workshop at the I House on the UC Berkeley campus.  20 of us were lucky to be in it.  John passed on exercises to study lines created by us with brushes and pens...shapes-letterforms-text blocks.  All of us had varying degrees of self imposed success and failures.  I think everyone learned a lot.  I certainly did.  Not only did John give us this class, he also gave a presentation at the San Francisco Public Library. It was standing room only and was well received. He also gave time to sign his book, Scribes.
Here are a few photos from the workshop that I can post.

A practice piece of John's to test his pointed pen and paint.  The smallest sentence is only 1/16".

My attempts using flat brush and have lines intersecting or interacting...

More attempts.....

White board examples of explanation on forms of text.. but first printing with the influence of Roman Caps.

All eyes front as we went around the room for critics.

Piece I did with John's 2" brush...fun...

The accordian folio done with John's suggestions of using our first 2 line stroke statues...need to finish the text..

Only the one folio that I finished..can be seen this way or upside down...still has balance..illustration to text..

John's example of uneven alignment

Here is another great piece. I can't remember who did it.

Christina Schenk did this lovely folio

Joe Boissy had time to do the intersecting line alphabet...this is his first attempt...good! Bonnie Noehr also made time to do them and was successful, I think.