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Finding the Flow with Gina Jonas
Saturday April 10 & Sunday April 11 2010, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Location: Hudson's Bay High
School, Vancouver, WA
$75 (materials fee included) PSC members
$100 non-members (includes
$25 membership; please include a completed membership
form when registering)
This
workshop introduces a vital, new approach to calligraphy focusing upon
flow — the life spirit of form. To cultivate letterforms
with flow requires increasing our awareness of, and sensitivity to,
touch and rhythmical movement. To nurture this growth I offer exercises
in "dynamics" technique: a way to develop the interplay of
body, tool and writing surface. Just as this training and sensitizing
provides a natural foundation for learning calligraphic letterform,
it also serves as a basis for exploring alphabets as gestural line
and artistic self-expression. Moreover, the body-mind work of this
holistic, interactive approach offers many 'objects' for the practice
of calligraphy as meditation or mindfulness training. While the aim
of this workshop is to help expand awareness of flow, its heart lies
in a process of dicovery and development. As we attune body, mind and
senses through it, we bring greater confidence and joy to calligraphic
practice!
Both Thomas Ingmire and Denis Brown highly reccommend Gina's workshops. Reviews of her workshop give superior marks for her ability as an instructor as Gina guides us in finding the flow and giving life to line.
Gina Jonas currently lives in Seattle, Washington but was raised in Portland and her first calligraphic teacher was Lloyd Reynolds.
"Since my early days as a calligrapher, calligraphy has meant more to me than "beautiful handwriting." Hints about the nature of this 'something more' came from my first teachers, Lloyd Reynolds, who instructed me in the classroom, and Edward Johnston, whose books I read. As a student of Lloyd's I took to heart his citation, "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!" and his compelling words, "Caress the letters lovingly onto the page." Equally striking as his ideas, Lloyd's own italic handwriting seemed to actually embody the intangible qualities he prized so highly: vital force, rhythm, harmony and life-movement. Indeed, written symbols drawn by his hand seemed to celebrate life just as vividly as they communicated information! Moreover, the very same qualities of vigor and energy were, I believed, those to which Edward Johnston referred when he declared: "Our aim should be to give letters life that we ourselves may have more life." Thus, from these two seminal teachers I derived the view, if stated by neither explicitly, that letter-making was a larger, more meaningful endeavor than I had at first imagined: an undertaking by which one infused form with the energy and sensitivity of one's own vital life spirit".
Quoted from her essay, Calligraphy as a Spiritual 'Way'
http://www.ginajonascalligrapher.com/
Make checks payable to PSC and send the registration form to Ingrid Slezak. Questions: islezak@comcast.net or 503-351-4991. DO NOT mail before March 5, 2010.