As we draw near the end of the year, we look forward. I am also looking back, in a virtual retrospective that mirrors what I experience every time I open my flat files. Earlier this year, I was invited by the Friends of Calligraphy to gather five images for their Instagram featured artist series. Five meant I could pick one from each decade of my calligraphy life, which proved to be great fun. I’m revisiting it here for my readers who don’t partake of the two social platforms where it appeared last May. Since I have retired a significant part of my artist life, I am filled with gratitude for all my years of making.
These five works run the gamut from embarrassing to tender, from accomplished to audacious. Taking them chronologically:
1980, Evergreen Red, my first wine label. Black ink on typing paper, glued to another sheet, well marked by blue pencil with my straightedge, for reproduction on a photocopy machine at a place called Maple Press near the campus.
This was my first completed project, created for my husband’s homemade wine, printed in multiples on a photocopier. The rubber cement is now discolored from the old cut-and-paste layout method. This piece is the hardest one to share, because it’s the most imperfect, but that makes it the most interesting. The backstory is that I had been dabbling in calligraphy for about five years when my husband-to-be started making wine and asked me if I would make a label for the bottles. Sure, I said, but didn’t get around to it, because I was very insecure about my calligraphy. Finally he said, Well I could call my old girlfriend who used to do calligraphy projects for me. No wait! I said, Let me get right on that! Thus was my calligraphy career born, out of sheer bloody-minded jealousy.
Bonus for sharing this on Facebook, an old friend from high school days said: I remember that label! I kept an empty bottle of Evergreen Red in my kitchen for years. And I don’t doubt there is a bottle still lurking in the depths of our garage too, the right half of which is still called The Winery.
1992, “Fra Giovanni’s Letter to a Friend.” Walnut ink (actually made from peat, so more golden than true walnut) on fine art paper, 24K gold leaf laid on acrylic matte medium, gouache for the border.
I first heard this lovely greeting on a Revels audiocassette. It was attributed to a monk who supposedly wrote it in 1513, and I decided it would be a perfect project for my newly-discovered obsession with medieval calligraphy and illumination. I lettered the text with a brown ink, gilded the initial and leaves, and finally drew and painted the border. I made several of these as originals, selling them in a shop called Nonesuch (loved that name), until I finally made one for reproduction to sell in catalogs. I have only a few of those prints left, so (shameless plug), here’s the link. (Full disclosure, the reproduction is not as bright as this 14K laid gold in the original).
The distinctive watermark tells me I used Nideggan, which used to be my favorite paper, but it took me a while to remember what it was called, which was very distressing. I thought I would always know this. But it did lead me on a search across the internet to land at the Ampersand Book Studio, which brought the sad news that the Zerkall Paper Mill is no more, destroyed by flooding. (The page above also has a lovely photo of the watermark.) I hope I have a sheet or two of this still in my flat file, or its sister paper, Frankfurt, laid papers with wavy lines and a fine hand.
The photographic quality of this 1992 image is terrible, but I still love it for the brilliance of the gold.
2001, Yosemite Valley Award. John Muir quote in lettered in white gouache on paste paper, then offset printed.
This was a dream job. We had just returned from our first-ever trip to see Yosemite Valley (still astonished it took me so long to get there). It was our 20th wedding anniversary, and when I saw my husband weeping at his first sight of El Capitan, I fell in love with him all over again.
About a week later I was contacted by the National Park Service to create an award for those who had participated in creating the Yosemite Valley Plan, which aimed to preserve the park from too much traffic and other degradations. I couldn’t believe my good fortune: to be paid to create a piece of art about the most beautiful place on earth. I had not actually seen what’s commonly known as Valley View on our trip, but found a beautiful photograph of it in the photographer Galen Rowell’s book The Yosemite, which I borrowed from the library. I traced the silhouettes of El Captain, The Three Brothers and the Merced River, got out my pigments and paste and made this painting. Then I took my heart in my hand and wrote the quote on it. It was to be reproduced in a small print run to be framed and given to only those who worked on the Plan. It was the last time I made an image like this all in one piece.Thereafter I learned enough Photoshop to do my lettering separately and drop it onto an image. No more working without a net for me. I was and still am very pleased with this image.
2010, A Beautiful Mother, poem by Alice Walker in a unique artist book, 2010. Hand lettered and painted with paste paper and gouache, stitched and bound, with slipcover. More images of this book are here.
Alice Walker’s poem “We Have a Beautiful Mother” was so beautifully spoken by the author at the 2003 devotional concert Praises for the World, invited by the singer/songwriter Jennifer Berezan, that I asked for and received permission to use her poem in a series of five artist books. Ewan Clayton‘s remit to his class at the 2000 calligraphy conference – “What is your calligraphy for?” – was part of the mix that led me to making artist books that expressed a spiritual longing. That note of purpose has never left me, and I have often honored our mother planet in my work. It would be hard to pick which of the several books I made for this series was my favorite, but I have a special fondness for the free writing here that makes the ground for the poem’s words. This is also the only one of five I still have in my possession. Sometimes I hold back some of my creations so my grandchildren can see what I made.
2024, EGO SUM MEAE, a tattoo designed with the letters from my invented “goddess alphabet,” and four symbols which represent Earth, Air, Fire and Water.
I created this design in collaboration with a friend who also happens to be one of my favorite special collections librarians. The request came from a comprehensive knowledge of the arc of my work and a like-minded concern about the erosion of women’s rights to their bodies. The words are a version of Latin, a language that for a long time was rarely taught to women. Their translation is “I Am My Own,” a statement many might take for granted, but which many women born into a woman’s body will understand more urgently. That she would want to put her personal statement about autonomy onto her own skin using my Neolithic-inspired letters on her own skin was an honor for me. More about how I created this alphabet here.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this wander through my calligraphic past. It’s been a pleasure to assemble this small collection and share some of my rarely-seen art.
