Celebrating Solstice with Weathergrams

Happy Summer Solstice!  This morning, I hung my weathergrams that we created in our calligraphy class, one from each student and our instructor, Christine Colasurdo.  Famous Portland calligrapher, Lloyd Reynolds, encouraged his students to make weathergrams to practice their Italic hand on recycled paper (grocery bags), honor nature with their own written poems or haiku and hang them in the garden each season.  At the Fall Equinox,  I'll replace these with ones to celebrate autumn.  The idea originated with the Japanese who exchange tanzaku paper strips with their hand written messages.

 Mine are stamped with a hand-craved eraser stamp and Chinese vermillion ink.

Here are the weather grams of fellow students....

It will be fun to see how they 'weather' and deteriorate during the summer season.  I will enjoy seeing them outside my studio window flutter in the wind and change with time .

Next week, I'll be attending the Calligraphy Northwest, the 31st International  Conference for Lettering Artists, at Reed College where Lloyd Reynolds taught calligraphy.  The Portland Society of Calligraphy, which Reynolds established in 1969, is sponsoring the conference.  Each member who joins the society receives a copy of Reynold's Weathergrams book.  An exhibit of members artwork is on display in the Pearl Room  at Powell's City of Books until July 3rd.  I'll share with you some of my experiences the first week in July.