CLAS Festival of Calligraphy 2016

In 2016 I co-directed our second CLAS festival 2016 at Leeds with Andi Bennett. (the beautiful lettering above was done by Judith Porch in David Harris's workshop)

Our accommodation was excellent being pretty new and all in the same block. We had an eventful start with very tired delegates after a long drive in the rain and less than competent organisation from the events management team of the university which meant we got off to a difficult start.

Once again we invited suppliers to come to the start of the festival and many delegates took advantage of this either ordering their materials in advance for collection on the day or to pick up a few extra items.

However, our workshops got off to an excellent start with our brilliant and professional team of tutors  of Georgia Angelopoulos, Loredana Zega, David Harris, Joy Daniels, Penny Price and Marlene Gray who were complimented on the quality of their workshops in our feedback forms and we all saw the results of this work in our second show and tell session at the end of the week.

 

  Georgia Angelopoulos's examples were all laid out at the end of the room and frequently referred to!

student work from Georgia's first session

 student's work from Loredana Zega's workshop

pointed uncials from Joy Daniel's workshop

some beautiful botanical illustration from Penny Price's workshops

 

All the A2 board sized bags, with Loredana’s brush lettering, were sold and make a fantastic and useful reminder of the week. Below is my initial visualisation.

We had several excellent talks in the evenings with our tutors happily sharing their experiences and in-depth knowledge of their subject. Loredana surprised us with a very personal performance including dance and lettering with a slideshow accompaniment.

Our gala dinner was a lovely way to say thank you and farewell to everyone. We had a fantastic display of place names which were made to take home by the recipients – most of whom never found out who had made theirs – though one or two people did fall for our joke and wrote out a card for Ms. Ann Letterer!!

this was my contribution! (above)

We continue to build on our experience of running the festival and have made a few changes such as the show and tell and having the suppliers available at the beginning.

Collage and Family Trees...

I have recently completed a very personal family tree. It was for the Art and the Letter exhibition at the CLAS AGM last year. I was enthusiastic when the topic was suggested at a committee meeting, saying "I have been meaning to do my family tree for ages!" So now I was obliged to get it finished in time to send off in February.

I have completed several pieces of work that have been collages and relate to landscapes and the natural world. The first was this piece that I worked on after being given the idea of layering tissue paper with natural food gelatine to stop the ink bleeding when doing a CLAS i2a course at Cheddar:



 The second was an excerpt from the community poem Dart by Alice Oswald. I used the flow of a river from a trickle at its source to the wide old age stage, the rocks on the banks and stepping stones with layers of tissue papers. I used watercolour in the background and pulled the resist lettering forward through the layers with coloured pencil...



Next was piece started with Oxford Scribes and the late Gerry Glaister after a residential weekend for members at the old Wiltshire Study centre at Urchfont - now sadly closed. We worked on three different texts in the same piece...

detail

Then my biggest commission for Salisbury Hospital; three pieces using the words of the poet in residence. The hospital overlooks the plains and countryside of south Wiltshire

I also drew on some ideas I had had on a workshop with Mick Paine at the CLAS festival in 2010 on rules and randomness

I have done two family tree commissions in the past - the first was all in French and went back to 1400. By the time I had finished it I realised I had hopelessly underestimated the amount of work required

Shortly after Christmas I started work on mine... 

I had done a workshop on family trees with Sylvie Gokulsing at Oxford Scribes a few years ago and had been alerted to some of the complexities faced with designing these historical documents. I didn't want to leave anything out and I also wanted to create a contemporary piece.

I looked out all the information I had about the family. I had been collecting bits and pieces over recent years and two members of the wider family had done some quite extensive research so we had information that went back to the 18th Century including a semi famous painter on my husbands side and cobblers and cave dwellers from Herefordshire on my side.

Calligraphy classes start again next week!

Oh dear organising the CLAS festival of calligraphy has quite prevented me from posting this last year so there is a lot to catch up on! 

Here is a little taster from last term's work by my lovely calligraphy class. 

We were inspired by Edward Wates and Hans Joachim Burgert and I was thrilled with the work they all produced.