calligraphy – Linda C. Everson

The Pillars of the Earth

Linda — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:03:40 +0000

Tonight on Starz is the beginning of a 8 part mini-series based on Ken Follett’s novel, The Pillars of the Earth. This epic story deals with conflicting elements: building and destruction, love and war, good and evil, religion and royalty, family and foe, feast and famine, joy and misery, and so on. Although the fight for the crown in feudal England is a central theme, the evolution of building a massive Romanesque church to building a soaring Gothic cathedral in medieval 12th century England intrigued me more.

How does this story about architecture relate to me and my experiences in life? Like Tom the Builder and Jack, my father, grandfather and many uncles were builders. They built everything! Commercial buildings, houses, furniture, cabinets, outdoor sculptures, and extravagent bird houses. Building is part of my roots!

In college, I had to take art history classes where I studied Romanesque churches, Gothic cathedrals, flying buttresses, cornices, naves, and so on. At the time I found it a bit mundane. Since then I’ve been fortunate to travel to Europe, and now find that those classes were very valuable when visiting various architectural sites. As I read the novel, I found myself intrigued by all the building practices of the time.

Although I’m not a builder, I now have a penchant for photographing ancient walls. While in Andalusia, Spain, I toured lots of Moorish architecture and photographed the walls and crumbling arabesque ornamentation. Those images were used as background textures in my Arborglyph and Arabesque monoprint series. I worked on this series for an exhibit in Kuwait in 2007.

Calligraphy is an important art form there. My Arborglyphs (calligraphy-like glyphs that have NO particular meaning) provide a visual link between cultures.

Arborglyphs and Arabesque: (2 symbols 1, 3) Ancient Rust Walls

Inspiration – Antonio Tapies

Linda — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 04:44:34 +0000

Artists are often asked what other artists inspire them. Yesterday I was interviewed on www.blogtalkradio.com/annette-coleman in the Artist name names, what artists inspire their work episode. I thought I’d share my thoughts about inspiration in my blog also.

One of my favorite art books is The Language of Antonio Tapies: Surface and Symbol. Both surface (texture) and symbols are a major element of my artwork as well. Antonio Tapies is a Spanish artist who does prints, mixed media paintings, assemblage and sculpture. In the 1950’s he did Matter Paintings in which he used sand, dust, and other materials that suggested fossils, cracks, and fissures. Matiere painting refers to use of texture. Tapies also often used letters, graffiti, and calligraphy- like symbols in his artwork, possibly because he came from a family of bookmakers. In my Arborglyphs series of monoprints, I also use calligraphy-like symbols. Tapies once said, “Art is not decorative, it is a philosophical system or language that contains a total vision of the world”. I like his use of the word “language”. Although my Arborglyph symbols have no specific meaning, they often ‘seem’ to evoke a memory of something in the viewer’s eyes.

I was also inspired by a video about him at the Tapies Foundacio in
Barcelona, Spain. Tapies was filmed walking in his garden, home, alleys and pathways, where he observed what he called “glimpses” of the fairly mundane things. Texture on the cobblestone, scratches on an ancient door, shadows in the garden, or flickering light across a rugged wall. All these so called unimportant close-ups of the world played an important role in his abstract imagery, and I also make the same close-up observations of nature.

If you look at his artwork and at mine, your would probably not see many similarites, yet our visions are fairly similar. We both like surface and texture, both make use of symbols and language in an abstract manner.

Arbor Day, Arborglyphs…

Linda — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:48:08 +0000

Arbor Day was celebrated recently and it makes me think of my father! He was always planting trees and bushes, and I remember neighbors saying that if he planted a broom, it would also grow. Arbor Day, which is usually celebrated on the last Friday in April, encourages the planting of trees.

I too have a penchant for trees, and they are a source of imagery for my artwork. ‘Arbor’ pertains to trees and a ‘glyph’ is ‘a symbol used for non-verbal communication’.

I began my series of Arborglyph monoprints back in 2002. I was photographing textures (natural scarring and peeling) on aspen tree bark, and decided to use those images in my printmaking endeavors. I took the negatives and enlarged them in the darkroom. To my delight, the images looked symbolic and resembled calligraphy or characters. I exposed the images to solarplates (photographic printmaking plates) and then printed them onto paper on an etching press. I began with 6″x 6″ solarplates, but quickly starting combining several solarplates with other printmaking techniques to create larger, more complex monoprints. I am still working on that series today. See my PORTFOLIO, Arborglyphs.

Arborglyph: (1 symbol 3) I

Later, I heard an interesting discusssion about aspen carvings on Colorado Public Radio (KCFR). They were talking about Arborglyphs in the southwestern states. Apparently, the name I was using for my monoprint series is also the name used for the graffiti carved into aspen trees by Basque and Hispanic shepherds while tending their animals from the early 1800’s – 1950’s. Because aspen trees do not have a long life span, documentation is currently being made of these older graffiti laden trees before they die and their legend disappears. Several articles have recently been written about these Arborglyph trees, and many people at art festivals have commented on certain trails to take to find these shepherd images.

Sometimes I photograph the man-made graffiti on the aspen trees, but generally I prefer the natural scarring and peeling. I’ve found that imagery provides more abstracted, symbolic images which tend to look more like calligraphy, and have a more mysterious overtone. I’ve created my own pictorial language of glyphs and actually have my own ‘invented language’.

I also incorporate the glyphs in my artwork into the title signature line on the monoprint.