Students in the Calligraphy and Text Based Art course offered by Villanova University at SCI Phoenix had a unique opportunity to have their artwork shown off to the public. Three students had their work featured in a special exhibit at the school. Their artwork was hung on the walls at the university’s main campus through Nov. 17.
The following is an excerpt from the wall card at the exhibition:
Calligraphy and Text Based Art is a long-standing course in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and has been adapted to the setting and materials permitted at Phoenix. Students produced the art in this exhibit reaching for the calling in the course title, Kallos Graphia.
The arc of the course took students from learning the history of writing and gaining basic skills in the discipline of broad edge penwork to the ability to make important words beautiful. Sometimes using their own words, sometimes words from others, the work and evident care intrigues and compels the viewer to pay attention to these words. After proficiency in Italic writing was earned the students launched into projects writing in ribbon, circle, and spiral forms, made concertina books of haiku, learned Trajan lettering and worked with negative space, chose an international script and the cross-cultural decorative use of knotwork, made relief prints illustrating the text theme of imagination, and wrote music in the Gothic letterform. The semester’s experience led to a final exam project making a pilgrimage map or tree of knowledge as ways of organizing text and story in visual form. It’s a lot! of learning, engagement with ideas, practice, and making.
Students took on these challenges- all are difficult to master in a short time. Like all student groups in a class, some bring experience in artistic practice and others are completely new artists. They used this art-making immersion to examine words and communicate visually with strength and grace. I asked them to take the skills they earned through their practice and the ideas discussed to surprise the viewer. Art accomplished.