GEMMA BLACK : ARTIST / CALLIGRAPHER

When David was invited to perform at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, I contacted my friends in Townsville to say I may be coming and would they like a workshop of their choosing if I came too.  Delighted with the response from Sue, I ran a workshop called Layered Lettering which involved coloage & colour as well.  The group Coral Sea Calligraphers, who I have taught for before were just as lovely and responsive as always. And, from the first evening's "meet & greet at Isabelle & John's home, to the workshop itself at the Jame Cook University Art School, the Townsville hospitality was exceptional. Rae Smith devoted a good deal of her time to entertaining me around the galleries, cafes, artists studios & shops and other places of interest.  I thank her for her time and energy ... we had a ball!!!! The Australian Fesitval of Chamber Music  excelled in fine musician and craftsmanship.  The performers and performances were marvelous.  From Bach in

These are the first few letters in my second alphabet for 2011 in ALaW . Gessoed black paper with pencil letterforms & peircings.

A golden commission and a table full of vellum. A lovely little commission as a gift for Vonda.  I am pretty certain Vonda shan't be reading my blog. A Letter a Week ... is well under way. I have cut my 7cm x 7cm squares from gessoes panels of black.  The lettering is coming along slowly and I am squezing ALaW in with the commissions.  Look out for the piercings to come!

An interesting find in Red Deer: the Bradley Stencil Machine Co. Stencil Maker. I taught a very eager class at Red Deer College in Alberta Canada just a few weeks ago in July. In this workshop we explored the development of the versal form and studied the hand from the Stowe Charter, a Cnut charter hard.  We covered pen and ink lettering as well as pencil drawing. There was a very strong emphasis on good letterforms, study techniques and research methods.  The class was great fun, the student very receptive and interactive. Detail of the Stencil Maker. I would have loved to use this maching for letter making artworks. Oh Canada!  A desert on the menu on our last night celebration ... Oh Tummy! Participants table at the students showcase. Teaching colleague Massimo Polello from Italy With Heather Lee who made it the Red Deer workshop happen for me.  I am grateful to Heather for her generocity and friendship.

I have started a series of work which include piercings.  I was inspired by these little trinkets, some of which I took to the Summer School in Winter and the others I took to Red Deer.  The more I am piercing the more I am enjoying the works.

Colleen Little at work. The Summer School in Winter was held in Melbourne, Australia late June, early July 2011. It is an annual international calligraphy event organised by the Calligraphy Society of Victoria . The workshop I taught was called Come in out of the Cold: the role calligraphy plays in our lives. It was a three-day workshop specially designed for the CSV SSiW.   After discussion of the role calligraphy plays in our lives, the words we use, the colours we choose and how we present work we made connections both creatively and spiritually with the work so the true essence of what we wanted to say, visually, speaks profoundly.  It was a scary propostion to run such a workshop where the theme is one which you can't quite put your finger on but once you go through the process it all makes sense.  Well ... for my participants I hope it did! The joy of Colleen's work. "It won't hurt a bit!" My Love! I am very happy with my love. The Summer