SeptemberMAIN GALLERY (Sept 1–15)Ren Riley & Erika Kohr IslandShow Me

NICHOLS GALLERY (Sept 1–15)Lisa OrselliJourneys Through Encaustics

GALLERY TEN (Sept 1–23)

Mendocino Open Paint Out Featured Artists

ALL GALLERIES (Sept 17–23)Mendocino Open Paint Out

OctoberMAIN GALLERYArt Explorers

GALLERY TENDan Scannell

NICHOLS GALLERYEmmy Lou Packard

NovemberMAIN GALLERYMembers’ Juried Photography Exhibit

November – continuedGALLERY TENMary VaughanEarth Tones and Nature Messages

NICHOLS GALLERYVirginia Ray

DecemberMAIN GALLERYJoell JonesA Story of Self

NICHOLS GALLERYPaul Reiber

JanuaryALL GALLERIESMembers’ Juried Exhibit

FebruaryTO bE ANNOuNCED

MarchMAIN GALLERYMarine Wildlife Exhibit

GALLERY TENIlja Tinfo

HELEN TROXEL

mendocino art center45200 Little Lake Street at Kasten Street, Mendocino707 937-5818 • 800 653-3328MendocinoArtCenter.org

mendocino art centerO N E X H I B I T

SEPTEMBER through MARCH · Open Daily

Second Saturday Artists’ Receptions

Each month at 5:00pm

Schedule subject to change.

MARTA ALONSO, 2018 BEST IN SHOW,

MEMBERS’ JURIED EXHIBIT

CAROLYN LORD, 2017 BEST IN SHOW

JOELL JONES

HELEN TROXEL, 2016 BEST IN SHOW

REN RILEY

EMMY LOU PACKARD

Fall/Winter 2018–19 11

Sarah Logan came to the north coast in 2006 as an Artist in Residence in Ceramics at the Mendocino Art Center. She left for awhile, but the beauty of the coast and the connections she had made here during her residency drew her right back. She lives in Fort Bragg, works at Piaci Pub and Pizzeria, and creates unique sculptural ceramic pieces based primarily on natural objects. She was one of the artists recently displaced by the fire at the Bottling Works Building in Fort Bragg; she credits MAC’s Ceramics Coordinator Evan Hobart with offering her studio space to finish work for an important exhibit after the fire.

Sarah says she has always been an artist and “I always asked for art supplies for every birthday and holiday, and I

still use a sculpting tool I received from my mom when I was a kid.” She grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, in the town of Spearfish. Her high school had an excellent art program, including a ceramics program whose instruc-tor encouraged her to experiment not only with ceramics, but other art forms as well. After graduation, she headed to Minnesota State University at Mankato for its well-known ceramics program, and graduated with a BFA degree in Ceramics, with drawing as an emphasis. After a semester in an MA program at Mankato, she applied to and was accepted for a residency in ceramics at the Mendocino Art Center. The entire surroundings there – MAC’s campus and gardens, the ocean, the local flora and fauna, all had

a tremendous influence on Sarah’s work. She was inspired by the natural environ-ment of the coast and became particularly interested in documenting transitions in life – a dying, wilting calla lily, a curled and brown rhododendron leaf, empty seed pods, a bleached whale bone, a wafting feather – and began creating pieces based on the passage of time. The challenge for her was how to create in clay a memento of her experience of that decay – a sculptural memory of that evanescent moment. Her pieces, from ceramic pods to her “preser-vation jars,” address the issue of how we

By Peggy Temple

Capturing Memories in Clay

Left: Object Study 1, wood fired stoneware, plinth oxidation porcelain, 4" x 6" x 6".Right: Wall Cube, wood fired stoneware cube, oxidation fired porcelain, 4" x 4" x 4".

Top: Shadow of a Home, wood fired stoneware and porcelain, individual homes 2" x 1" x .75" and 3.5" x 3.5" x 2". Sarah Logan photo: Martin Nakatani.

SARAH LOGAN

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document the processes we observe in nature.One of Sarah’s many captivating projects was a series

of small sculptural houses she created after a short trip back to South Dakota during which her grandmother took her on a road trip through the landscape of her life. “Grams drove us around to see all of the places that had been important in our grandparents’ lives together. We saw where they were born, the slough they swam in as children, the church where they were married, and the homesteads of long-gone friends, neighbors and family, all within a 20-mile radius of where Grams still lives today. Much of the physical evidence of the people who thrived in these places is disappearing. A few decaying buildings and broken-down windbreaks are all that remain. These landscapes made me consider the objects we choose to surround ourselves with, and the memories associated with them. The house sculptures are a type of family portrait – physical markers of the memories we build our homes with, and the articles we leave behind when we go.”

All of Sarah’s ceramic pieces are essentially vessels – a seedpod, a house, a bowl, and as she begins a new work, she is asking herself, “What does this vessel contain? Where was this vessel connected? Where did it come from?” Then she will take lines and textures from mul-tiple sources and put them together creating a piece that invokes comfort and restfulness. She prefers working from the idea of discarded or dying things, expanding into universal con-cepts. Visual objects are to her “metaphors for experiences and reminiscences dulled by the

passage of time. By creating mementos and souvenirs to document my experiences, I seek to give form to my memories, distilling them to their essence and preserving them against decay.”

Sarah works in porcelain, and with a red, mid-fire clay body. While at MAC she discovered the porcelain clay body particularly well suited to her work; she describes this clay as “luscious and buttery!”

Sarah is a member of Northcoast Artists Gallery in Fort Bragg. She exhibits at some trade shows and fairs, including The American Craft Council Show and the ACGA Clay and Glass Festival in Palo Alto (Association of Ceramic and Glass Artists). She teaches ceramics at the Mendocino Art Center and has been a visiting lecturer in ceramics at Stanford. Her work can be seen on her website at sarahloganceramics.com and on Northcoast Artists website, northcoastartists.org. She will have an exhibit in Mendocino Art Center’s Gallery Ten, in April 2019.

Left: Sculptural Tea, wood fired stoneware, 5" x 5" x 4".Right: Seed Cone Vessel, wood fired porcelain, 3.5" x 3.5".

Left: Structure Series, oxidation fired stoneware and porcelain, 5" x 5" x 4". Middle: Beans (detail), wood fired porcelain, sizes vary. Right: Obsession Jar Series: Bezoars, Pods, Beans, wood fired stoneware and porcelain, vintage glass canning jars, each jar 10" x 5" x 5".

Fall/Winter 2018–19 13

14 Mendocino Arts Magazine

Representing more than30 renowned artists fromthe western United States.

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Spring Irises, oil, Graydon Foulger

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Untitled 2, George Kossivas

Fall/Winter 2018–19 15

Calligraphy is an ancient visual art form related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a brush, pen or other writing instrument, which creates writing and lettering that is expressive and decorative.

Chances are, you or someone you know has tried calligraphy. For me it goes back to my grandfather, who used a fountain pen for his beautiful correspondence. It was a joy to get a letter from him!

The revival of this historical art form is real. And yet, today is different from the past because fewer take classes to become professionals, as I once did. More likely a retired person revisits earlier creative interests and says to me, “I’ve always wanted to learn this and now I have the time.” They take a class for encouragement and direction, and often discover that practicing lettering is an enjoyable, meditative experience. They use their new skills for cards, journals, inspiring quotes.

When I teach calligraphy I include information about its history. For example, the early alphabet was just 23 let-ters; J, U and W came later. So if you’ve ever questioned that an official stone inscription might be misspelled as in, say, ‘MVNICIPAL COVRT,’ rest assured that its historical reference is correct.

It’s interesting that we are born with the desire to create and to communicate. From petroglyphs and pic-tograms, we’ve come a long way using twigs, brushes, chisels, quills, nibs, crayons, pencils, ballpoint pens, and markers. Everything has potential now. Recently I peeled off a layer of birch bark and used it as parchment, of sorts.

And when artists gather at conferences, it’s fun to see what letters or designs we can make with stones, pods, string, and shells. If accidental texture appears, it’s a success! In this new freedom of expression, we tap into creativity at an inner level. One of my instructors challenged me to let go of graph paper, my commercial design security blanket, saying, “Let art have its way.”

Let’s take a look at the major groups of tools in the evolution of calligraphy:

Chisel Pen: Early scribes (those who made illumi-nated manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells) were both men and women. Some did not read, but recorded drawn letters in gouache on parchment (animal skins), using

By Phawnda Moore

Calligraphy

an

Evolving art Form

16 Mendocino Arts Magazine

gold and ground minerals for colors. These amazing art-ists worked in primitive conditions to carefully preserve sacred documents.

In the 1980s, I lettered one of my favorite quotes (previous page) that defines the journey. It’s in Bookhand, a Roman variation, written with a chisel nib pen. Left is a recent pointed (gothicized) Italic style. With chisel tools, thick and thin strokes are achieved by varying the pen angle.

BRUsh Pen: It may seem that brush is a modern inven-tion because of popular marker pens, but we’ve only had those since the early 1960s. Long before, around 3,000 BC, the Egyptians used twigs as brushes, followed by the Greeks and Romans, who drew classic forms with brush on marble before incising the letters.

Eastern cultures have embraced the brush for artis-tic expression since 250 BC, fusing poetry, literature and painting in one form. The Chinese make their own brushes, sometimes taking the first hair from a baby’s head (said to bring good luck), and selecting marble and finer materials for the brush handle. Today, an estimated 20 million Japanese practice the art of calligraphy.

Going west, in the United States the brush was used from the 1920s for advertising and sign painting. A small group of professionals still exist today.

Pointed brushes and brush markers are versatile, friendly companions. They can be used with a variety of media to draw images and letters.

POinted Pen: Script hands, Copperplate, English Roundhand, and Spencerian, have always been used for correspondence. Modern scribes use pointed tools for historical styles and drawn images, as well. Pointed tools (including pencils and brushes) use pressure to achieve

thick and thin strokes.The pointed pen is often associated with

wedding invitations. The images to the left show the tool, media, and a design for my 2015 holiday card, where I transformed an everyday snow girl into a snow angel with this pen.

Fall/Winter 2018–19 17

GRaPhite: Today graphite can be both classic and modern, as shown at the right. On the far right, an acan-thus leaf border frames pencil drawn, Roman-influenced letters. Immediately right, a journal page displays, well, a little exasperation! It’s interesting to see the influence of history in many contemporary projects.

B-niB: Another popular tool is a B-nib, which works well with other hands and media. My favorite tech-nique with this one is to use a rain-bow effect with colored inks. “Be Sweet and Stand Tall” is one such example (bottom right).

m

As you might expect, exploring different media and tech-niques is part of the fun in calligraphy. So what happens to all the “not so perfect” efforts? Well, they can become a project on their own! Here is an accordion book I created with strips from my heap. The lower image includes the six words I use in teaching: observe, ponder, integrate, evaluate, surrender and share.

Phawnda Moore will be offering a weekend workshop, Pointed Pen Illustration, at the Mendocino Art Center, September 15–16, 2018. More information and online reg-ister at MendocinoartCenter.org/Fall18/Moore.html.

More examples of Phawnda’s work can be seen on her website, journalismdesign.net.

18 Mendocino Arts Magazine

Fall/Winter 2018–19 19

The Place for Local Art45050 Main Street(Up the garden path)

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(707) 357-4810thegallerymendocino.com Photo Cubes, Steve Chell

The GALLery Mendocino

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