Getting ready for the Guild’s 30th Anniversary Exhibit

The Greater Cincinnati Calligrapher’s Guild is celebrating 30 years in existence this year. In Nov. we had a wonderful dinner party to celebrate, and to cap this off, the guild will be having an exhibit of wonderful calligraphic artwork at the downtown Cincinnati Library starting Feb. 1 through March 10.

By the way, I designed the logo we’ve been using for all the anniversary events.

I had a deadline to deliver my pieces of artwork in mid Dec. One of these pieces was started in May, and was shown as an example at several guild meetings as a ‘work in progress.’ So, it was finally time to finish it.

The piece was started in Jacqueline Sullivan’s Wet and Wild workshop. I was workshop chairperson and coordinated putting this workshop together. It was touch and go with this workshop between getting enough people to attend, to having to change the venue the week before the workshop. But, that’s whole other blog story for a later date.

The background of the piece was made by pouring watercolors onto the wet watercolor paper. While the paper was still wet we could do some other things to it to move the color around, but really, there was no control of how the paper would look in the end. It was very freeing to just keep creating papers and experimenting with different techniques to see what happened.

This particular piece has the effects of sprayed on rubbing alcohol, as seen in some of the whiter areas. Also used was a sprinkling of dry Rit dye that shows up as dark spots on the bottom.

Once the paper was dry we went about layering different coordinating pieces to build up the piece and plan where lettering could go. Now, I had taken this workshop before, so I knew some of the tricks and techniques already. Using foam core to raise the layers off the background, remembering to use the ‘odds’ rule to make a piece more interesting.

I’m not sure what my thoughts were regarding choosing the quote for this piece. I had done that quote before, so maybe thinking about leaves and the green color of the piece, may have contributed to my decision. I recall that I did a couple different styles of lettering before deciding on the all caps variation of Italic. I used navy blue Ziller ink for the lettering and the word ‘Life’ is done with Pan Pastels, which I love using.

To finish it off, the piece is framed in an oak shadowbox frame. I had contemplated spray painting the frame a gold/brass color to match the gold in the piece, but ran out of time. I still might do that at a later date. Maybe I should have everyone vote.


Although I posted the end result in my Fresh Art album on Facebook. I wanted to share some behind the scenes insight into this piece of artwork.


Lastly, if you are in downtown Cincinnati, stop by the library during their business hours to see the exhibit. I have another fun piece in the exhibit entitled 'Now I Know My ABC's' Can you guess my inspiration for that piece? This exhibit will definitely show that calligraphy is more than just beautiful handwriting, it is an art form in itself.


In the studio:

I’ve been busy working on paper products for Evie’s 2nd birthday party which is this Sun. Can’t believe my baby is turning 2. Invitations, cupcake picks, and a banner for the window. I’ll show them off in another posting soon. 

Evie antics:

Her Dad downloaded a new app for her iPad. It’s a Dora Coloring Adventure. You choose the picture, add stickers and color it in by touching a crayon color and touching the screen. She got the hang of it really fast. She likes making everything a monotone and lots of stickers.

Until next time, meanwhile ... Go Steelers! Stairway to Seven....

Jen