Forty Years #30: Jenny Hunter Groat

Some time after I took Jenny's Notan workshop, I wrote her a letter. I had never done anything like that before. I wrote to her about my conflicted feelings about calligraphy, about my desire to expand beyond it but not knowing where to go. I'm not sure I ever felt like I truly belonged to whatever I thought the calligraphy world was. As I started to question and try to stretch my wings, I never felt those efforts were appreciated. Looking back, I see that there was a lot I got wrong over the years due to my oversensitivity and insecurity but I think there is some truth to my feelings.

Somehow my letter touched a chord with Jenny. She wrote me back a long letter of encouragement, the first of the many times she shared her profound belief: "Follow your heart. Let it and your work lead you." The letter was the beginning of a correspondence which helped me find my voice and led me to a week with Jenny at her Knowing/Not Knowing retreat/workshop at Green Gulch Zen Center in 1988. During her first evening talk there, she gave me words for my dilemma. She said that there are two kinds of artists—interpretive and originating. Her examples were the ballerina Margot Fonteyn as interpretive and the modern dancer/choreographer Martha Graham as originating. It became clear. I wanted to be an originating artist. Green Gulch also planted the seeds for the Spirit Books. After two days of calligraphy in the studio, I went outside and spent the rest of the week playing with sticks and natural materials and creating little environments.

In 1992 I created an edition book, Lessons From Green Gulch. It contained my text about Green Gulch with the closing passage:

I went to Green Gulch holding my creative spark. The gentle and wise touch of Jenny, the warmth of new friends, and the safe haven of hallowed earth fanned the spark into a small fire. I left knowing the task ahead: to keep the fire going, to both feed it and protect it. May it burn on. 

along with photocopier imagery from photographs and Zen koan, 

and words of wisdom from Jenny.

Read more about Jenny on my blog here.

November first

Here is a piece from Seasonal Celebrations which I began in 1988 when I was experimenting with calligraphy and photocopier manipulations.

Golden Slumbers from Notan Press

Golden Slumbers is a series of four prints of lullabies I created in 1988. At the time, I was still doing calligraphy and working a lot with the photocopier. The images were created from photocopied natural materials. Here is what I wrote in the introduction:

As I remember being a child and experience being a parent, I often feel how difficult the relationship can be. As a parent, I am trying to meet both his needs and my own and guide him into the world. As a child he is, and I was, eager to experience the world his own terms and in his own way. There is often conflict. But there are moments, times of absolute peace and union, when the sharing of that time is the only thing in the world. Everything makes sense; everything is bathed in a golden glow. These lullabies are a celebration of those times. I have used traditional lullabies as a way of connecting with other parents across time and space. I have drawn on my feelings as both a parent and a child in creating this work.

Golden Slumbers pdf

The work from Notan Press is offered for free under the Creative Commons license.

If you spend time with the work, please consider a contribution to support the sharing.

The Spirit Books from Notan Press

The Spirit Books were a major part of my life from the creation of the first one in 1992 to the completion of the series in 2005. As I worked on them, I kept in mind the quotation from Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke:

In this there is no measuring with time. A year doesn’t matter; ten years are nothing. To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless. But it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretches before them, carefree, silent, and endless. I learn it daily, learn it with many pains, for which I am grateful. Patience is all!

The Spirit Book Series (PDF)


The work from Notan Press is offered for free under the Creative Commons license.

If you spend time with the work, please consider a contribution to support the sharing.

Childbirth Journey from Notan Press

Childbirth Journey, created in 1985, represents a turning point in my work. After eight years of serious work with calligraphy, I was struggling to make the transition from interpretive work to something that was completely my own. I turned to my own experiences and began the series to come to terms with my first pregnancy, the death of my mother, the disappointment of a Cesarean, and the wonder of new life. There were fifteen pastel gesture drawings with an accompanying text drawn from my journal in calligraphy.

I exhibited the series when my son was almost a year old and had mixed feelings about whether it belonged on the wall. In the context of an exhibit within a finite time period and in a specific space, it worked. You entered the gallery to see Childbirth Journey (although those who wandered in off the street of our coastal city expecting to see seascapes were surprised). After the exhibit, I couldn’t picture them hanging on the wall of my or anyone else’s home. The content was too specific and personal to be viewed on a daily basis.

I translated the pastel drawings into a portfolio of 8.5 x 11 black and white offset prints. The text was again in calligraphy and the images created with charcoal drawings and manipulated photocopies of natural materials.

Childbirth Journey

The work from Notan Press is offered for free under the Creative Commons license.

If you spend time with the work, please consider a contribution to support the sharing.

Notan Press

Notan Press was started in 1988 to publish my limited edition artist books. I find that life presents a series of lessons and one of the things I learned was that I do not like making multiples. For me the pleasure is in the initial creation and exploration. After years of limited activity, Notan Press starts a new life in the virtual world. Inspired by the the possibilities of the web for sharing knowledge and creativity, I am offering selections of my work, both old and new, for free.

The name, Notan Press, is taken from the Japanese design principle based on the interaction of dark (no) and light (tan). When I first encountered the concept in a design class with Brenda Lowen-Siegel at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, I was intrigued. My appreciation deepened when I took a weekend workshop with artist/calligrapher Jenny Hunter Groat. For Jenny, notan extended beyond the page and into life. From her experience with Zen Buddhism and Jungian analysis, she saw notan as more than a design principle; it spoke to her of the importance of acknowledging and balancing light and dark, positive and negative, in all aspects of life. The workshop with Jenny occurred in the year that had brought the death of my mother and the birth of my first child. Her ideas touched me deeply and I, too, came to embrace this view.

A calligraphic interpretation of the connection between lettering and Jenny's thoughts on notan is available as a pdf.

Contradictions: Jack Kerouac, Lowell, the River

Contradictions: Jack Kerouac, Lowell, the River is in its third incarnation (first was a unique artists book, second was an edition book) as a powerpoint slide show.