CONSTELLATIONS

I'm not sure if I'm early or late to constellation themed paper. Above, a wedding I can't wait to share soon, with the escort seating chart printed by the ever-imaginative Mr. Boddington's (I'll be thinking of Jolene and J. & A. this weekend!). Below, cards I picked up at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff designed by Laura Palese and printed by Clarkson Potter. Each features a die-cut constellation. Finally, Nole at Oh So Beautiful Paper did a great round up of star-themed goodies here.

COFFEE WITH PLURABELLE

Watercolor + Calligraphy Place Cards by Plurabelle Calligraphy from Molly Suber Thorpe on Vimeo.

It was such fun to meet up with Molly of Plurabelle yesterday for coffee. I so admire her work and jump at the chance for more meetings of calligraphic minds. How beyond wonderful to be able to sit down with a stranger for two hours and talk about a whole host of issues, ideas and challenges you both share. Above: Molly's tutorial on watercolor place cards, and one of her styles that is a favorite.

LE WEEKEND

This weekend: Santa Monica Farmer's Market, Venice's Abbott Kinney, Eggslut, Milk's Rocky Road ice cream sandwich, a Truffaut double feature at the New Beverly Cinema -- "The Soft Skin" with the beguilingly beautiful Françoise Dorléac who died tragically young. And lusting after wallpaper by CFA Voysey (pictured in Design*Sponge at Home -- above, Apothecary's Garden and Fool's Parsley). Also read a bit about the quite amazing snowshoe hare who, in the winter, grows a tremendous amount of fur on its splayed paws creating little snowshoes with which to skim the snow (I have never rooted so enthusiastically for a preyed upon rabbit).

AUTUMN EQUINOX, FORGIVENESS, HARVESTS

What a relief to welcome the first day of autumn-- the fall semester, sharp new pencils, soup. During our drive across country we stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park. In addition to the very autumnal colors on display, my favorite part was an exhibit at the park's modest museum. At every turn, there's a reminder admonishing the removal of even a nugget of petrified wood. The letters above come from remorseful thieves. "Nothing in my life has gone right," since I stole the wood, says one letter. The other: "My life has been totally destroyed since we've been back from vacation." I couldn't help but notice they were written in the fall, before the year's end. Something about the season and making things right...

Looking at these colors I was reminded of a Fyodor Tyutchev poem I studied long ago:

At autumn's beginning
There is a short, but wondrous time
When days seem made of crystal
And evenings are radiant…

Also: this Kitchen Sisters' piece on blacksmith and forager Angelo Garro is an inspiring way to ring in this season of bounty.

TASTE, MENTORSHIP, DEADLINES + SCOTCH

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through".

I came across this quote by Ira Glass on Joy's blog (via Melinda Josie via The Nouveau Romantics) and have been thinking about it these last few days. It is so irrefutably true. And yet I want to pipe up quietly, as someone who has fought and continues to fight this battle on various fronts, and say "there are other things that are, for me at least, important in addition to simply 'doing a lot of work.'" Namely: find a mentor, be a mentor, build a community, and have friends with whom you can talk about this fight. In person. With a glass of scotch.

Of course the formula for closing the gap is one part raw volume. But, personally, I can't imagine having the motivation, stamina or inspiration to keep producing that volume without having cheerleaders and being a cheerleader for others. So often, for people who've fought through, the default attitude seems to be "I fought on my own, so you must too" instead of "let me help you with your fight."

Understanding the alchemy behind building cooperative, team spirit has been stoked by listening to countless podcasts from the Harvard Business Review's IdeaCast recently where the concept of leadership is constantly discussed. "You can't win this contest without a lot of help," said Professor Warren Bennis, who is an expert on leadership studies (in episode 206 on the art of leading well). "Taste means really picking the right people." Bennis says a key characteristic of leadership is grace and generosity. Why is leadership so often discussed in business, but so rarely discussed when it comes to the type of creative work Glass talks about? Is it because creative work is by nature solitary? Are you able to produce volume in a vacuum? Should everyone fight the fight alone?

SITE SANTA FE

During our cross-country trip I happened to catch two phenomenal exhibitions at SITE Santa Fe. The first, pictured above, is Suzanne Bocanegra's All the Petals series. These works deconstruct 17th century paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder. Bocanegra takes apart, petal by petal, all of the flowers in Brueghel's Sense of Smell and Flowers in a Blue Vase. (I found it useful to see the original painting). It is interesting to see the works set against a white background, and from a distance. I also appreciated a glimpse into her process seen here.  And Pae White's Material Matters, in which she takes everyday objects like a thrift store decoration or crumpled up tin foil and transforms them into gigantic tapestries, was also terrific. 

GENTLE READERS...

"I'm just such a fan of your lettering, and was wondering how you developed your style and perfected your script--traditional classes? A mentor? A book and lots of practice?"

I’ve received a number of emails like this, asking me about how I got started, what techniques and supplies I use, and what advice I have for contemporary calligraphers just starting out. So I thought I’d tackle this question today.

I. AN INGLORIOUS START

My mother was a hobbyist calligrapher so, from an early age, I grew up with pens, light tables, shrieks of horror as the ink smeared on the very last word of a project. I was lucky enough to attend Reed College where the legacy of master calligrapher Lloyd Reynolds is still very much alive. (Click here to listen to Steve Jobs describe how his time at Reed, studying with Reynolds, influenced the design of Mac. The weathergram, pictured above, is a signature Reynolds creation: a short poem written on a paper bag and hung from a tree.)

During a summer in New York I studied Italic calligraphy with the talented, patient and irreverent Paul Werner.  When I moved to Philadelphia, I took small group classes in Copperplate at the home of Carole Maurer, who is an exceptional teacher, and joined the Philadelphia Calligrapher’s Society an active group that does great work. During this entire time, (and maybe even still, by some accounts) I was a terrible scribe.

At Reed, I collaborated on a project with a photographer friend that involved calligraphing the names of professors on the mat that framed their photos. During a recent visit, the photos were still up, but he mats had been replaced. In New York, I remember the thrill of a café asking me to redo their chalkboard menu. I was so proud that I mentioned it to Paul at my lesson and he insisted we return to the café so he could see it, whereupon we discovered that they had immediately erased my work. At a holiday ornament swap in Philadelphia, my ornament was the only one not chosen as a take-home gift by my more talented peers. Lesson #1: you will face adversity.

I loved certain parts of the letterforms I studied – the angle, how an "e" connected to a "v," but I’d work myself up into such a tizzy of anxiety over how perfect the letter needed to be that the practice lost all pleasure. And shouldn’t it be pleasurable? This feeling was compounded by the fact that every time I’d travel to Europe or visit a flea market I’d end up at those bins of old letters and postcards, swooning over the handwriting which – with its history and lack of pretension – resonated with me far more than the samplers or abecedariums of yore.  Letters and handwriting associated with a time and place were urgent, and conjured visions of streets, mailboxes, homes, cafes, gardens, postmen, wars, lovers and the spirit of the person writing. Lesson #2: be honest about what you find truly inspiring.

II. A GAME-CHANGING BLOG POST

Around this time Betsy Dunlap’s work hit the blogosphere. I encourage you to visit this Design*Sponge post from 2007 in which Grace gives just-starting-out Betsy a lovely introduction and the classically-trained calligraphic community erupts in a hateful, embarrassing, vitriolic screed against Betsy’s work (a sample above). Five years later, after appearing in countless Martha Stewart spreads, creating stunning and memorable work, and calligraphing Grace’s own wedding invitations, Betsy and her compatriots sent a unmistakable signal to this small but vocal faction of the mean-spirited establishment. Work that conveys a unique vision has been met with overwhelming success and appreciation by a grateful public. Lesson #3: always be generous of time and spirit and, in the words of Amanda, this type of cynicism can suck it.

III.  FORGE AHEAD

So in 2009, as I was gearing up for my own wedding I decided to give it a go (thanks very much in part to letterpress artist Emily Johnson who said, during a fateful drive to the airport “you should give it a go.”) and inject pleasure and my own sensibility into the letterforms I had studied. What resulted is Neither Snow. I placed an ad on a Practical Wedding (which should answer the “perfecting a script” question – what I do is constantly evolving). And I joined the ranks of a cohort of younger, collaborative scribes who are just as inspired by photoshoots in Russian Vogue as they are by Redwood trees in their back yard.  It’s been two and a half years of unimaginably gratifying collaborations, confronting the well-documented challenges of being a small business owner, and glimpsing worlds – from penthouses to Oxford libraries—that I never knew existed.

My suggested reading list for bringing a baseline of consistency to your letterforms before developing your own style is:

Lloyd Reynolds, Italic Calligraphy and Handwriting

Eleanor Winters, Mastering Copperplate Calligraphy

Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay, Write Now: The Complete Program for Better Handwriting (and please give this book to every school principal you know and ask them to teach a more intuitive form of handwriting before the skill dies out altogether).

And as for materials: play around with pointed pen nibs, of which there are countless varieties (be sure to run them through a flame before you use them). Try out different holders – straight often work best for left-handed calligraphers (like me). Experiment with inks (do you prefer Dr. Martin's or McCafferery or Sumi or mixing your own with gouache?).  Practice with paper that feels good – I like Canson’s Marker-Pro. Study with real people (from classes at a local extension school to immersive classes like Reggie Ezell). My go-to resource for materials and questions is Paper and Ink Arts.

Thanks to so many readers for taking the time to write, and for all of your questions. Please comment below if you have others. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Go forth!

NEW YORKER + POST OFFICE

The New Yorker posted a depressing entry on the rise and (slow, painful) fall of the US Post Office through the lens of 14 of the magazine's covers. I'm broken hearted to say that I've recently switched and now entrust FedEx with my client packages, although I still do send regular mail. Visiting post offices in rural areas during our cross country drive made the cuts and closures even sadder.