Forty Years #38: The Power of Words

In 2015 I contacted the Clare Gallery at the Franciscan Center for Urban Ministry in Hartford, CT about an exhibition of the Spirit Books. They were interested but the gallery could only accommodate 2-dimensional work. Through a series of email conversations, we arrived at the decision that I would create large scale calligraphy banners at the gallery. I liked the idea of exhibiting calligraphy and inspirational quotes but I didn’t want to do framed work. I didn’t want the expense and I didn’t want the formality. I wanted to do something that was more immediate which led me to suggest that I would do the lettering live in the gallery.

I called the exhibit The Power of Words and chose short quotes that I felt would give comfort and courage. I thought of lines that one might want to have drift through one’s mind while online at the grocery store. I experimented with sumi ink but found it dripped and used Golden Liquid Acrylic with flow medium added and a 1 1/4 inch Silver Black Velvet brush. I liked that the softness of the brush’s edges gave letters that were not too crisp. The banners were four feet wide by six and a half feet long. I liked the way the large size changed the viewer's relationship with the words.

  The gallery presentation in January 2017 was a performance of sorts and I prepared by repeatedly writing the quotes full size on newsprint. In the studio, everything was set up to duplicate the experience in the gallery except the quality of the paper. I wrote each of the ten quotes about eight times. I felt that the design of the lettering needed to be both bold and airy. I don’t think I would have arrived at the style I used without Mike Gold’s workshop.

The lettering in the gallery went well. I only left out one letter (in the Kerouac quote at the top of the post) and I noticed it right away. The free form layout allowed me tuck it in before I moved on to the next line.

The banners were exhibited this fall at the Monastery Gallery in West Hartford, CT along with the Spirit Books. I lettered two more much narrower banners, again before an audience. I find that I enjoy the experience but also feel great relief when it is over.

Here is a pdf I made with images of the banners and information about the quotes. I did intentionally choose to have an equal distribution of women and men. I also wrote an article about the process for Bound & Lettered Volume 14, Number 3.

Forty Years #36: Outdoor Sculpture

In 2007 I stopped teaching bookmaking in schools and took advantage of the time to broaden my creative horizons. One of the things I did was take a workshop with Bruce Iverson on Chinese brush painting at the Newburyport Art Association. I enjoyed the class but felt that the cultural gap was too wide for me to bridge and make work that felt truly my own. It did, however, reawaken my desire to work with ink. I had also decided to participate for the first time in Outdoor Sculpture at Maudslay State Park in Newburyport. I made banners of sumi ink drawings using hemlock branches and attached them to hemlock trees. Although I had tested them in the weather, they were not able to withstand the solid week of rain that came right after they were installed. I was able to repair them enough to be presentable for the three-week run of the exhibit but they never returned to their initial glory. I didn’t let that stop me and tried them in a couple of other locations. I had some more unexpected weather challenges and abandoned them as a project partly because of the technical difficulties and partly because they had become repetitive.

The next year I was having trouble figuring out what to do. I turned to what had been my source of inspiration for so many years before—words. The theme was Trace (creating work that adheres to the theme is optional) and I chose to work with the words of nineteenth century poet John Greenleaf Whittier who had often visited Maudslay when it was a private estate. For Whispered Fragments: John Greenleaf Whittier, I hung Tyvek strips with lines from his poems written with Sharpie marker from two old apple trees.

The following year I used the words of a nineteenth century English poet, William Wordsworth. In a piece called Word Play, letters made of sticks attached to metal created a search and find puzzle in a tree which spelled out "Let nature be your teacher."

Two other Maudslay pieces used words. For The Spirit of the Garden, I wrote the words of Martha Brookes Hutcheson, designer of Maudslay’s formal garden on bricks  with paint and sand.

Breathe was my response to the theme Inside Out. 

My final piece of outdoor sculpture was at Flying Horse Sculpture at the Pingree School in South Hamilton, MA. I continued Whispered Fragments with the words of Emily Dickinson. I had many difficulties with the installation which I chronicled on my blog. It turned out that the four crab apple trees were in an incredibly windy place. I started with 88 strips. There were only 20 still on the trees when the time came to dismantle the installation. I decided that I would only work indoors from then on. 

Forty Years #26: Childbirth Journey

The first work that I consider to be truly my own was Childbirth Journey, a series of 15 abstract pastel drawings with calligraphy of excerpts from my journal. Here's what I wrote about the work on the back of the invitation: "As I tried to come to terms with the experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, I felt that while the baby was making a physical journey into the world, I was making an emotional journey to motherhood. The series is an attempt to express the wide range of emotions—up, down, and in-between—the made up the journey."

After the exhibition at the Newburyport Art Association, I questioned whether the wall was the right place for the work. It made sense on the wall of the gallery but I didn't want to hang them in my home. They were too emotional to look at all the time. I felt they needed to be presented in a more intimate form which is what led me to the handmade book.

Forty Years #24: Concord Quotes

While it didn't seem like it at the time, this 1983 exhibit was in some ways the high point of my calligraphic work before I moved on to books in 1988. Then, I thought it was the beginning of a new chapter of creating series of work using authors or texts that fit together in some way. I used everything I had at my disposal—lettering style, paper, color, design—to put forward my interpretation of the text. My intention was to enhance the viewer's experience of the words and everything I did was in service of them. As time went on, my ambitions changed. I no longer wanted to be the interpreter; I wanted to the creator. The images from old, scratchy slides are less than ideal but do get the point across.

Automatic pen and gouache

White-out poured from bottle with gouache lettering

Black and red sumi ink

Automatic pen, turquoise and brown inks

Abstract marks with gathered reed and gouache

beans lettered with toothbrush and gouache

Lettering with automatic pen and gouache, 

Blueberry stamped at end of flourish on n

Forty Years #19: Penworks

My first solo exhibition was Penworks at Bridgewater State College in Bridgewater, MA. It was very much about interpreting texts and the collection was eclectic.

There were 19 pieces in the show. The photos aren't great but I am happy to have a record. One piece in the exhibition sold—Catsup is a vegetable—which was a classification for the school lunch program by the USDA under Ronald Reagan.

A smaller version of the exhibit moved to the Dover Public Library thanks to Hallie Long. She was one of the many people over the years who have responded to my work and helped get it seen.