Timely quote by master calligrapher Penelope Culbertson.
For ICONIC, an art exhibition, through June, 2017.
Fairweather House and Gallery
612 Broadway, Seaside
Definition of iconic:
1: of, relating to, or having the characteristics of an icon
2: widely recognized and well-established •an iconic brand name
3: widely known and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence •an iconic image •an iconic vacation
For Iconic, an exhibition, Penelope Culbertson created new water-color works combined with calligraphy. In addition, in the photo are seascapes by Lee Munsell. Throughout the years, water-color artist and master calligrapher Penelope Culbertson has appeared during events at Fairweather’s to offer art lectures, calligraphy history lessons, and scribing LIVE events.
For more about the artists, please visit http://www.fairweatherhouseangallery.com/ artists/ … Penelope Culbertson. …Lee Munsell
Penelope Culbertson began her art studies at the Portland Art Museum as a child, in the art department at Cleveland High School, at Reed College with calligraphy master Lloyd Reynolds, at Willamette University in Salem, at the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Institute de Bellas Artes in San Miguel, Mexico.
Penelope was the co-founder of the Art Academy of Kona and the West Hawaii Arts Guild where she served on the Executive Board. Penelope worked in the Hawaii State Artist-in-School program and showed as the Artist-in-Residence at the Hyatt Regency. Her work is in the permanent collection at the Royal Waikoloan Hotel.
Since her return to Portland, Penelope has had seventeen solo exhibits of her watercolors. She showed year round at the Hawthorne Arts Gallery and annually at the Buckman Art Show where she was the founding chairman of the Children’s Art Sale. She taught children’s art classes at the Buckman Arts Magnet Elementary and for the Portland Parks Dept. in their after-school program. In 1999 she helped produce a book of children’s watercolors about the Portland Water System. She was co-founder of The Hawthorne Arts Guild and showed in all their monthly group shows.
Penelope teaches weekly classes in calligraphy and watercolors for the disabled. She experiments in watercolors, oil pastels, collage, tapestry weaving and calligraphy. She is a member of the Portland Society of Calligraphy.
Q: What is calligraphy, you ask?
A: Calligraphy is the art of forming beautiful symbols by hand and arranging them well. It’s a set of skills and techniques for positioning and inscribing words so they show integrity, harmony, some sort of ancestry and rhythm.
Symbol is a mark which has a specific agreed-upon meaning in a language, like a letter of the alphabet, a numeral or a word. Integrity of a letter means admirable proportions and form. Harmony describes a pleasing relationship between different visual elements in a piece of calligraphy: parts of a letter, letters, words, the whole text and surrounding space. Ancestry refers to the heritage of letter-shapes, materials and techniques which calligraphers use. Rhythm means the calligrapher’s deliberate repetition and variation of marks and spaces to create feelings of pattern and emphasis.
But wait, there’s more about calligraphy…
The Oxford English Dictionary defines calligraphy as:
1. Beautiful handwriting; elegant penmanship. (Early seventeenth century.)
2. Style of handwriting, penmanship generally. (Mid-seventeenth century.)
3. In painting etc.: beauty of line; (elegant) brushwork. (Early twentieth century.)
(The word comes from kallos, Greek, meaning ‘beauty’ and -graphy, ‘a style of method or writing, drawing, etc’ which in turn comes from graphe, Greek, meaning ‘drawing, writing’.)
… calligraphy is a script that exhibits exceptional and often self-conscious artistry and aesthetic quality in design and execution. (M. P. Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms (London: The British Library, 1994)
Calligraphy is a skill. This skill involves touch, pressure, hand movement, unity, and that elusive quality we term “beauty.” (V. Studley, Calligraphy (NY: Dover, 1991)