The audience enters the quiet performance space, dimly lit by aphabetic luminaria and hung with long black banners, each depicting a single letterform of world calligraphy in contrasting white, to find each performing calligrapher's hands dramatically spot-lit in the darkened room. As they become acclimated, the only sounds are the delicate scratch of quill on paper and the soft chime, like meditative singing bowls, of dip pens tapped against the rims of glass ink wells. The audience is instantly immersed in the momentary choreography of ink or paint as it flows onto paper or animal skin vellum. Such is the magical stage of
Illuminated Letters: a Calligraphic Performance Event.
Excerpted from my
article on the event for the spring issue of the
Friends of the Alphabet Newsletter.
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| Farsi with hand cut reed pen, Ali |
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Romans with goose quill, Emily Canter
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Gilding on deerskin vellum, Victoria Lansford
I seem to turn everything metallic! |
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