Summer catching up

Where does the time go?!

With summer comes conference! Anita and I were lucky enough (?) to attend the Letters Mingle Souls International Calligraphy Conference in Naperville, IL - just outside of Chicago in mid July. Why, you ask, would anyone go to Chicago willingly in July?! besides the sweltering hot weather with extremely high humidity, we were there for the company of fellow calligraphers, the classes, the shopping at John Neal's and Brenda's Paper and Ink Arts and all the serendipity that happens when over 400 lettering artists converge on a small campus town.


The conference had added these great trolleys to transport us all around a spread out campus. They were great when you happened to find one going your way! The campus buildings were set in a residential area, some of the beautifully restored houses dating back to the 1860s. The college has been there since 1861. It is a lovely setting for a campus and historic downtown Naperville is just a very short walk away, complete with an Irish Pub in case we were thirsty!



My first class was with Ewan Clayton, looking at Early Roman Uncials. The details will be in the next issue of the Broad Edge. We also had a lesson on sumi ink. Try grinding a Japanese ink stick for some great letters and amazing hairlines! If you are lucky enough to have one from the 1950s it will likely have been made with Japanese red pine soot and be highly sought after. Sumi in the bottle is different in that they have added salt to the formula and that's what rusts your nibs. Salt helps the liquid from hardening.

Did you know that Edward Johnston once camped on Saltspring Island? I learned that from reading Ewan's new book, 'Edward Johnston: Lettering and Life". It is available through John Neal.

If you ever get the chance, take a class with Ewan. You won't be sorry!






My second class was Contemporary Pointed Pen with Mike Kecseg. More details in the upcoming issue of the Broad Edge! Again, you would not be disappointed if you get a chance to take a class with the pointed pen "wizard"!

We learned so much, we were given so many possibilities to consider and try. It was a very full 2½ days!

And then it was the show and share afternoon where everyone gets to see what all the classes were doing. There was some incredible work shown and it would have been nice to be able to take all the classes.........

As an added feature, this year's conference had "mini classes" that were held during any free moment - sometimes during the dinner time and more after the evening presentation. I signed up for one, a Paper Bag Scrapbook. We made a fun structure using paper lunch bags, scrapbooking papers and embellishments. The examples that Marcia Freidman had where great and we could see where they would make a nice gift or a memory keeper from a trip. I'll bring mine to the September meeting for everyone to see.

What have you been up to? I know Anita was in Sheila Waters' class about colour theory and Ewan Clayton's class on Rustics. And as I am adding this some of our members are probably heading back north from their visit to Tacoma to see the St. John's Bible exhibit. Send me a report with some photos and I'll add it to our blog!

Hope your recuperation is going good Terry!

Don't forget there is a pot luck lunch at Diana's on August 16th! see you all there!

Almost forgot to mention!!! you heard it here first.......mark your calendars for August 2010.
Red Deer will be hosting another conference! By all reports the one they did a few years ago was fantastic and I'm sure they won't disappoint this time!