Eliza Holliday Letterist.com: March 2009

Friday, March 6, 2009

Graphite Techniques

I will potentially be teaching this workshop twice this year...so I'm getting back to my graphite projects! I'm always excited about teaching calligraphers about drawn lettering, because it frees them up to explore so many new shapes, qualities and shades and shadows...exploring outside the realm of their calligraphic tools, pens, brushes, etc...In the class we review basic drawing skills and build confidence in our ability to see, then apply those techniques to letters. Then those calligraphers can truly call themselves "lettering artists"! The many shades of gray...

Sunday, March 1, 2009

My co-worker Keli is getting married...I made her wedding sign-in book with the colors of her wedding:"ocean" blue, black & cream....the black came from some momi paper for endpapers and a pocket for stuff on the back inside cover...she is a crafty person, so I thought she would enjoy it...Thinking back on other sign in books I've made for friends and family...they are all so different...

A Speech to the Garden Club of America

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;
There are so many outcomes that are worse.
But I must add I’m sorry for getting here
By a sustained explosion through the air,
Burning the world in fact to rise much higher
Than we should go. The world may end in fire
As prophesied—our world! We speak of it
As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit
Of temporary progress, digging up
An antique dark-held luster to corrupt
The present light with smokes and smudges, poison
To outlast time and shatter comprehension.
Burning the world to live in it is wrong,
As wrong as to make war to get along
And be at peace, to falsify the land
By sciences of greed, or by demand
For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify
The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.
But why not play it cool? Why not survive
By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?
Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens
By going back to school, this time in gardens
That burn no hotter than the summer day.
By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,
By goods that bind us to all living things,
Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.
The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,
Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger
Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.
A creature of the surface, like ourselves,
The garden lives by the immortal Wheel
That turns in place, year after year, to heal
It whole. Unlike our economic pyre<
That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,
An anti-life of radiance and fume
That burns as power and remains as doom,
The garden delves no deeper than its roots
And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.