WRITING CONNECTS US

by Martha Slavin

A to Z: The First Alphabet

A to Z: How Writing Changed the World

If you haven't seen this 2-part documentary yet, find it on PBS' NOVA. You will discover how writing and the need to share our thoughts changed our world, created a path to equality, led to our Constitution, and the development of computers.

We are wired to communicate with each other, share our ideas, and to make decisions together. Written language can be found in the pictorial writings in Ancient China, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, Ancient Egypt, and Indic scripts, which show us that from early civilizations, we needed to communicate with each other beyond our own small groups.

In ancient Rome, each of the letters of the Old Roman Alphabet began in a grid and then were carved in stone. The carvers made the letters easy to read and as permanent as stone can be. The Romans didn't stop with words carved on stone. Literacy was high throughout the culture because scribes used papyrus to write on. The papyrus surface helped the flow of writing. The scribes developed a cursive style that was easy to read while writing on papyrus with its smooth surface.

courtesy of the Historyofinformation.com

When the Roman Empire dissolved and sources of papyrus disappeared, scribes turned to parchment, which is made from animal skins. Because parchment has a different surface than papyrus, writing became more laborious and expensive to produce, thus limiting the number of people in the Western world who had access to the written word. Paper, invented in China, did not find its way West until the crusaders' conflicts with the Ottoman Empire. Not until Guttenberg developed a printing press with moveable metal type did reading become readily available in the Western world.

As in the West, social systems in China and other parts of the world created disparities in literacy. But progress in both China and in the Ottoman Empire led to Gutenberg's invention, which allowed ideas and materials to more easily spread around the world. Printing presses, for the most part, these days, are consigned to museums as we have become a digital world, but we continue to find ways to connect together so that our ideas flow from one group to another.

Those of us who learned to print and then connected letters into cursive may mourn the fact that cursive is no longer taught in most schools. Teaching cursive has even become a political issue just like so many of our other traditions. Most students now learn to print, usually making capital letters (going back to the Roman carvers?) They then easily switch to technology using their fingers to type on a computer or phone similar to traditional typesetters and typists. With the addition of voice apps, we continue to tell our stories wherever we can.

by Martha Slavin

Calligraphers all over the world keep writing by hand, incorporating technology to perfect the design process. They use apps such as PhotoShop or InDesign to clean up their work. When finished though, the documents showcase either precise hand lettering such as the document by Gemma Black for the Australian government to apologize to the indigenous people in their country or free-wheeling mark-making such as what you will see in the Friends of Calligraphy's journal Alphabet, if you click here: https://www.friendsofcalligraphy.org/pages/Alphabet46.1.pdf

by Gemma Black

Check out the calligraphy of   http://www.gemmablack.com  and https://www.brodyneuenschwander.com/2d-work/

Find PBS' NOVA episodes:  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/

Look into one of the many calligraphy guilds all over the world that actively encourage writing:  https://calligrafile.com/guilds-conferences-museums

Don't miss the International Print Museum's Virtual Printers Fair. You will find a celebration of the printed word:  https://www.printmuseum.org/event/2020-la-printers-fair/

More about the origins of handwriting, read Script and Scribble by Kitty Burns Florey https://www.abebooks.com/Script-Scribble-Rise-Fall-Handwriting-Florey/30604979309/bd

Are we so different than other animals?  Check out: Humans and other animals

LAST OF THE YEAR'S GOOD READS

Read any good books lately? 

I have a stack of good ones that have carried me through this year. My favorite so far is The Library Book by Susan Orleans. Orleans writes about the fire that almost destroyed the Los Angeles Central Public Library in 1986. You may have missed that news because the fire occurred on the same day as the Chernobyl meltdown in the Soviet Union. Her story reads like a novel as she investigates the origins of the fire itself, but also presents the history of the LA library from its beginnings in the late 1800s. She makes you realize what work goes into running a library, who the people are who run the library, how libraries have always and continue to be an important community resource. 

This seems to be a good year for odyssey-type stories involving pre-teen and teenagers.

Summerlings by Lisa Howorth is set in Washington, D.C., at the beginning of the Cold War. The people in the neighborhood where the children gather all have some secrets, which are gradually revealed.

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, whose usual tales are mysteries. This book instead is the odyssey of four orphans who run away from one of the Indian Training Schools in Minnesota during the Depression and who embark on adventures down the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers in their attempt to return to St. Louis. A modern-day Huck Finn story with information about the training schools and the lives of the First Nations, who were forced to assimilate during that time.

Stay by Catherine Ryan Hyde who also wrote Pay It Forward. Stay revolves around two teenagers and their interactions with a woman who has been shunned by their small town. A good look at family relationships and the meaning of friendship.

The Nightwatchman by Louise Erdrich A novel based on Erdrich's grandfather who in the 1950s stood up to Congress to prevent the breaking of the treaty that guaranteed his tribe the reservation land in perpetuity.

Lastly, not a coming-of-age odyssey, but a story worth understanding:

Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy. Stevenson established the Equal Justice Initiative, which works with low-income, wrongly accused people who had not received fair representation or trials.

What books are you reading? Use the comment page or email me marthaslavin@gmail.com with your suggestions.

HARMONY

 Let's play.

Let's make art.

Let's take a moment for time for ourselves. Art is a healer of souls.

Art therapists encourage people to make art as a way to express their feelings. Art can provide meditative calm or it can be a way to let out anger, splashing that emotion on the page instead of at other people.

I tried watercolor this week and found myself returning to old habits of rushing to finish, of dabbing with my brush instead of with confident strokes, of pushing one color across the page instead of adding color with each stroke. In the end, I took the painting I made and cut off the piece I still liked, washed the color off the rest, and placed the cut-off piece in my bin for mixed media scraps. I then took a deep breath and looked at my collection of random pieces of paper.

I  thought of harmony, one of the principles of design along with balance, repetition, proportion, movement, contrast, and unity. These principles are what make a piece of art appealing to others. They have become intrinsic to me, but they underlay every piece that I work on whether it is a painting, print, mixed media piece, or hand lettering.

How do you learn to make these principles work for you? Collage art is an easy way to apply these principles. By taking a pile of random pieces of paper and moving them around the page, you will find yourself drawn to one layout over another. In my scrap heap, there are many pieces that I either think will be a valuable start to a design or were the wrong color, pattern, shape for the original purpose. I took a bunch of them today to see if I could create some way to find balance and harmony with disparate pieces. How can I tie them together to make a whole?

From my stack of scrap papers

First, I tried the repetition of shapes: squares and rectangles. Nope.

I added a circle. Nope

Removed some of the elements and added lettering. Nope.

Tried a paper with a circle cutout. Nope.

Added calligraphy and a larger circle to unify all the shapes. Getting there! 

I like the repetition of the vertical lines in the cardboard piece contrasting with the white lines on the right bottom corner. I like the yellow ochre, aqua, and magenta that run through the entire design, which helps your eye move around the page.

Circles always help. 

A few words do too.

This is a good week to tear up some paper, get out a paint box and brushes, find unusual tools, grab some glue, and begin. Take care of yourself.

****************

by MARTha Slavin

This piece is actually 4 small squares bunched together. Why do the four pieces work together? Repetition of patterns and lines, the green, blue-grey, and magenta that color each square, and the contrast between lights and darks.

This mixed media piece is included in Uppercase Magazine's #47 issue. Uppercase is a wonderfully creative magazine produced in Canada and filled with inspiring ideas. Take a look at issue #47 here: Uppercase Magazine #47

MY AMERICA, YOUR AMERICA

 As Bill and I filled out our ballots, sealed them in the return envelopes, and carefully signed our names, we reminded ourselves of the weighty responsibility of voting and the opportunity our country gives us to vote. We choose candidates for our and our family's future.

I brought to my ballot my values and principles that stand out from among many that I hold dear:

Truth

Justice

Compassion

Respect for the Environment

These four principles top my list and make it easy for me to choose the Biden/Harris ticket. 

What are the principles that you take with you when you complete your ballot safely at home or walk into a polling place? This year I hope you will vote in favor of decency, democratic principles, and your moral beliefs. Our country depends on you.

We saw this play almost four years ago and realized how timely its message is.

Before election night, watch Pete Souza's documentary, The Way I See It. He was the official White Photographer for both the Reagan and Obama administrations. You can find it for free on Peacock or buy it at Amazon. You won't want to miss it.

PAPER TO BOOK

I love combining words with artwork, which is why I continue to make my own books and art journals. The books become a good way to contain work done during a workshop and a way to practice new techniques and tools. They also can showcase a theme, poem, or story as in this book I made as my senior project ages ago, which I called What the Sun Said.

Before Covid hit us, I tried to go to at least one big art conference each year. Now I miss the challenge of being with other creative people. Zoom, Facebook classes, and online classes work well, but they're not quite the same, are they? If you have a chance to attend a conference, GO. You will come away full of brilliant ideas, enthusiasm, and new ways of looking at the world.

This book that I created while in a workshop incorporates images of birds along with feathers, ribbons, threads, and buttons, with muslin and canvas sewn to the pages to connect the individual pages together.

Circles and time are two of my most used themes. Circles hold ideas and are complete in themselves. Time represents change and memories.

Our cat is always curious

Exhibited at the online annual exhibit of Collage Artists of America this summer

Looking back at conferences, I remember Focus on Book Arts' fourteenth conference in 2019. The organizers asked attendees to arrive with a book based on the engaging idea to incorporate fourteen words that reference the number 14. The group presented a list of 14 ideas to work from and asked each person to select 5. I hope you will create your own 14-page book of creativity! 

Here are their instructions for the challenge:

"We are counteracting the Chinese notion that 14 is an unlucky number by celebrating our good fortune with a fourteen-theme book arts challenge. The list below contains fourteen themes, objects, color, and more that somehow relate to the number fourteen. Your mission is to take at least 5 (1 + 4, get it?) concepts from the list and incorporate them into a book arts piece. You may interpret your choices any way you see fit."

Citizenship -- 14th Amendment

Fingers -- sign language?

Forgetfulness -- # for forgetfulness

Fortnight -- 14 days

Gold -- 14 carat

Ivory -- traditional anniversary gift

Jewelry --modern anniversary gift

St. Valentine -- Feb. 14

Silicon -- atomic number

Sonnet -- 14-line poem

Stone -- British unit of weight equal to 14 pounds

Temperance -- Tarot cards: card of temperance

Transformation

Vermont -- 14th state of US

I've added some more 14 ideas:

Makar Sankranti -- celebrates January 14 as the sun moves from one zodiac zone to another

Moon -- 14 days waxing/14 days waning

Cuboctahedron -- 14-sided

Bastille Day  -- July 14, 1789

Lunar Landing -- Apollo 14

To explore book arts, click here:
FOCUS ON BOOK ARTS CONFERENCE

To see a video of a one-sheet book, check out

https://m.wikihow.com/Make-a-Paper-Book

Another superb conference:

WriteOnTheEdge 2022 International Calligraphy Conference to be held at Mills College in Oakland, CA  The committee is busy working on the conference and will have a website soon. Take a look at what was offered at the 2019 conference in Quebec.

https://rendezvouscalligraphy.org/en/index

COUNTING EACH DAY

photos by Bill Slavin

With Autumn, we sometimes hear the screech of a hawk being chased by a murder of crows. This morning the hawk sounded angry, chasing the crows through the trees, near enough to startle us so we ducked our heads. A hummingbird swooped down to the feeder and took a drink, oblivious to the ruckus around us.

by Bill Slavin

We have a fountain with goldfish and lily pads floating on it. In our first enthusiasm, we put far too many fish into the water, which became murky. We only see the goldfish when we sprinkle food on the water surface. The fish seem to thrive in the cloudy water otherwise. This weekend bees swarmed the lily pads, not for the flower nectar, but to have a drink on top of the pads. They are affected as we are by the extreme heat and smoke in the air.

by Bill Slavin

The other day as we headed out for our walk, we were surprised by a forest of mushrooms at the corner of the driveway. Our neighbor had cut down a tree in that spot and the mushrooms bloomed on its remains underground.

by Bill Slavin

As we watch the animals in our backyard prepare for Winter, we continue to count the days until the election is over, hoping that the results will do away with the stress and divisions that have surfaced in so many of us through the last four years. We cheer at the many signs for candidates lining the corners of busy intersections in our town, with more people than usual competing for spots on the fire district board, school board, and city council. We marvel at the long lines of voters in states where early voting is allowed and feel hope in people's renewed interest in our form of government.

Autumn is my favorite time of year. In many cultures, the season represents maturity and adulthood, a time of ripeness and harvest. It is also a reminder of the constancy of change, the ability to let go, and a time to seek comfort and warmth. Leaves turn, animals prepare for Winter, and we vote, all important parts of Autumn.

by Bill Slavin

 

 

FOCUS ON TEXTURE AND PATTERN

Some people see dirt, I see paintings.

Autumn seems much more of a change to me than other seasons. Maybe because in the U.S. back-to-school patterns used to be set in September and I still respond to that anticipation. I know that in other places outside of California the temperature has dropped far below what we are experiencing with the dry high-eighties degree weather here. We won't get leaves turning color until the end of October or even November, but we still see the golden light of Autumn. The shadows slant longer across the road, the mornings are chilly, but the leaves that now drop are dry and dusty, more so because of the intense heatwaves we've lived through this summer.

This is a good time of year to look for patterns and textures. Even cement becomes interesting as layers of gravel are exposed and leaves, sticks, and berries fill the cracks. Looking at each separate leaf on the ground, I can see the vein pathways like small city maps that highlight the process of life of the leaf. 

I take pictures as I walk. I look for inspiration among the greys, taupes, yellow ochre, burnt siena, and burnt umbre colors that have fallen to the ground and worked their way into the creases, leaving me with patterns, shapes, and changes in value that I can draw and use to create a collage or painting. The principles of design -- balance, repetition, contrast, proportion, rythym, and pattern -- stick in my head and guide me to focus the camera so I can create a harmonious, pleasing design.

Back home, I draw the bones of some of the photos:

I select the second photo because of the contrast of darks and lights, the amount of large and small shapes, and the texture.

Then I add some earth tones with watercolor and black markings with a black china marker, which is waterproof.

I tear paper and lay it down to check the composition.

I glue those pieces down, but decide to add some paper that I had eco-printed with leaves and a circle with sumi-i ink calligraphic marks.

I'm still not satisfied with this piece yet. There is always gesso or more paper pieces to the rescue. Sometimes, though, the piece just is a good learning experience.

Good article from NASA about rising temperatures:

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147256/california-heatwave-fits-a-trend