I have been practicing Japanese calligraphy for over 40 years. In 2017-18, I was very fortunate to study with Aoi Yamaguchi during the time I was a Fellow at Stanford. The piece on the left “Fellowship”, is about 6 feet by 3 feet. One of my fondest memories is of sitting on the floor in Aoi’s studio with her and her mother, going over and over a very tiny movement in the last stroke of the bottom character. It is only once you’ve achieved that level of intimacy with the characters that their spirit can flow from you, through the brush, and onto the paper – resulting in something pleasing to behold.
In 2024, I chanced into Reggie Ezell’s year-long English-alphabet calligraphy course “26 Seeds”. I wasn’t quite sure how I would feel about working with a stiff metal nib as opposed to a flowing Japanese brush and what it would be like to scribe letters that don’t have any inherent meaning on their own, as Japanese characters do.
In the first class, we spent a full weekend drawing Roman capitals, paying attention to how a change of two pencil-tip widths in the shape of a curve could make a letterform seem misshapen or stately. After class, I drew pages and pages of “O”s – I could see exactly what was wrong with each, but translating that understanding from eye, to brain, to hand motion, and through the pen to paper wasn’t a simple command.
Thus I came to find that, though Japanese and English-alphabet calligraphy are entirely different in form and technique, the practice of each requires the same kind of intimacy between the scribe’s mind, body, materials, and the forms being created. If you are to create a beautiful work full of meaning, you eventually have to give yourself over to the rhythm and embody the spirit of what you are writing, ultimately – and ironically – forgetting about the forms you’ve spent hours minutely analyzing.
In that way, it’s akin to what one of my favorite artists Robert Irwin has taught us – that “seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees”. When a work of art captivates us, perhaps it’s not only because we are engaged in truly seeing , but also because through the work we’ve gained that intimate connection to its maker.
This piece was created in March 2025 as part of Reggie Ezell’s class on Letterforms Inspired by the Saint John’s Bible.
THE LETTERFORMS
The inspiration for this work began with the letterforms themselves – the Incipit script created by Donald Jackson for the Saint John’s Bible. For me, these letterforms are timeless, having a beauty and weight that are grounded in ancient forms, combined with a modern flow and style.
THE QUOTE
I wanted a quote whose spirit would match the attributes of the Incipit letterforms. This quote is part of the Bahá’í Wedding Tablet and I have used it in every wedding ceremony I have had the privilege of being celebrant for over the last 20 years. Like the artistic masterpiece that is the Saint John’s Bible, this quote and aspects of the Bahá’í faith from which it is borrowed can be appreciated regardless of one’s spiritual affiliation. You can learn more about the Bahá’í faith here: www.bahai.org.
THE BACKGROUND DESIGN
I wanted to create a background that reflected elements of the quote – the vast galaxies that we tiny individuals inhabit and the stars from which we are born. This dictated my choice of colors and use of shiny star motifs. I also wanted to incorporate the concept of the two mirrors – which can also represent the two individuals forming a couple. Here these moon-shaped arcs serve to center the text and prevent it from seeming lost or floating in space.
THE MATERIALS & TECHNIQUES
The piece is 10” x 14”, on Arches 140 lb hot press. I taped the paper to gator board and created the background with very loose wet-on-wet watercolor technique using several Kuretake Gansai Tambi 呉竹 顔彩耽美 pan watercolors. To prevent the letterforms from being overwhelmed by the background, I lifted pigment from the center of the page using a dry sea sponge. When completely dry, I added lines radiating from the center using several colors of Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle watercolor pencils, then lightly touched these with a watered brush. The small stars are gilded in palladium leaf using an Instacoll base. I choose to create the two mirror forms using a very thick emulsion of Gansai Tambi in White Gold 白金色 on the dried background as I thought gilding these forms would compete too much with the rest of the piece.
After everything was very dry, I fixed the center surface with Krylon Workable Fixative and our old friend gum sandarac. I then completed the lettering using a Mitchell #2 nib and ink made from Kremer Manganese Violet dry pigment.
LESSONS LEARNED
With this and every other work I’ve produced in Reggie’s classes (I also took his 26 Seeds year-long course in 2024), I’ve become more confident in my abilities to produce a cohesive work from its conception to completion.
In this work, I also learned that it would have been easier to do the gilding after having done the lettering, and easier to do the gilding section by section in much smaller areas, instead of one quadrant at a time. The small dots were very time consuming to gild and I had to go over the edges of most of them with leaf twice to get a good result without orange Instacoll showing through.
At Reggie’s suggestion, I made a few color copies of the background on good paper to practice the lettering and try out different colors of ink. This worked great – the final choice of ink color was both obvious and surprising!
A haiku by Yosa Buson, written about 1770. This is my translation, which attempts to capture some of the meaning and feeling without being literal.
I created a small calligraphy book celebrating the Japanese microseasons of Spring Equinox. It features the poem “Her Spring Song” by Jean Garrigue. You can view the full book on my YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/qukfRoFXDZ0?si=mTbOw9CvL6-vvAte
And a book of the Summer Solstice microseasons features the magnificent poem “Solstice” by Tess Taylor. Thanks much to Bill at Tail Up Goat in DC for turning me on to it. I knit the cover the book! You can see the full book on my YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/iK2MyNmkCSo?si=wQVjW14IAvNzAicP