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Circle Book
May 10, 2008

What better way to end the year than with Sylvia Kowal, both at the Friday night workshop and the all day workshop on Saturday. To spend these two sessions with Sylvia was to appreciate her gifts in calligraphy and art, but to also appreciate her gifts as a passionate teacher. She approached each of the workshop with an intensity of purpose. She teaches from the perspective of her students and how best to teach her students/participants so they are successful. She is concerned with the final product, but equally important, the teaching methods and strategies that would enable her students to successfully complete the various projects she presented. I very much appreciated her strategy of using measuring templates upon which the participants merely had to align their paper to her measurements. This was one of the teaching tools that made the process of completing the various tasks with success and speed possible.

On Saturday, the focus of the workshop was a circle book, a book Sylvia adapted from a children’s book. It had a nontraditional and unusual construction and structure. The completed book folded up and fitted into a case which we also constructed. We began the morning by painting a large sheet of paper with varying acrylic paints in a free form application. We then made a small prototype of the circle book, so that we would know how to complete our larger book at home.

To enhance the decorative elements of the circle book, Sylvia gave the participants a lesson in the Neuland script along with various methods/techniques to decorate the script. We spent the remaining portion of the workshop working on our Neuland scrip in decorating our books. For those of us who stayed and had lunch with Sylvia, she was a vessel of information, sharing information on art products, paper, techniques, and projects. This was a gift in itself. It was a wonderful workshop with a wonderful, gifted teacher.

On a personal note, I made a request to Sylvia for instructions to one of the books that she brought on Friday evening. A few days later, I received a beautifully calligraphic enveloped with the directions inside. What a joy and delight to have received it.

Thank you Sylvia.
By Jeanie Kashima
 

Photos by Lorraine Brown