Love of Letters Exhibition - Our exhibited artworks
What is Love of Letters?
Love of Letters is a art exhibition organised by Beginners’ Table, a calligraphy community based in Singapore. The exhibition ran from the 5th - 9th November and this exhibition aims to share and present the works of our Singapore-based Calligraphy enthusiasts and artists.
Beginners’ Table — A background
The Beginners’ Table is a Singapore-based art community that hosts bi-monthly meetups with the public to provide them taster calligraphy sessions under the guidance of seasoned calligraphers residing in Singapore. You can check out their facebook page here
‘The Adieu to Susan’, 2019 by John Francisco
Ink on Paper
At the current stage of my calligraphy journey, complete artworks with the use of traditional techniques draws me the most. Techniques include gilding, calligraphy using broad edge nibs and intricate illustrations that compliments the scripts.
If you visited us at the exhibition, I hope you felt inspired to create and know that you are not alone in this community. To be surrounded by a room full of artworks created by our Singapore-based artists is a dream for me too. It is surreal seeing all the work put into building community through various groups come together at a single event.
“It is surreal seeing all the work put into building community through various groups come together at a single event.”
Exhibition Artwork One: Advice from the Caterpillar
I spent a couple days visiting my dear friends in Kuala Lumpur. Catching up with my dearest artist and friend, Sharlene ,was the highlight of my trip up North to Malaysia. What’s best is that in that same week, Ruilyn and John was around and we spent one of the evenings learning book binding together.
Upon my return from KL, John (@yakiujohn) and I thought we could use our newly learnt skill to use and decided to submit a book creation for the Love of Letters Exhibition.
We picked a chapter from Adventures of Alice in Wonderland - Advice from the Caterpillar to calligraph and we thought it was the most appropriate chapter to write for our very first book-creation.
If you flipped through our book at the exhibition, you would know that the chapter we chose to calligraph touches on several themes that challenges Alice’s identity and her insecurities. The biggest irony is the portrayal of the Caterpillar as being wise and way beyond his years, but often, his advice were nonsensical. A caterpillar smoking hookah? Let us try and rethink this again shall we, Alice?
Cowhide procured from our local leather supplier. Book bounded by John Francisco & Nichole Tin.
‘Alice’ by John Francisco & Nichole Tin
Ink on Paper, 297 mm x 420mm
Book cover illustration - Illustrated by Nichole Tin
With this book, John and I each took care half a chapter of writing each and we both illustrated the drawings closely referencing the original illustrations from the out of copyright book. The calligraphed pages are then bounded together by hand. The chapter: ‘Advice from a Caterpillar’ was the best representation of the challenges we faced as artists in this technology-clad society we live in. Information are so easily accessible, yet do we question whether these information are ‘trustworthy’, ‘helpful’ or ‘detrimental’ to our learning progress? So many influencers are out there influencing us, but is it rubbing us the wrong way? Through the sharing of this piece with our calligraphy community, we hope they rethink, and questions their sources when learning, but always remain curious and creative.
Information become so easily accessible, but are these information ‘trustworthy’, ‘helpful’ or ‘detrimental’ our learning progress?
Exhibition Artwork Two: For the German Flute
While I was doing research and reading up on old materials from the 18th century to share with my Copperplate course students’ , I chanced upon the original scans of The Delightful Pocket Companion for the German Flute by George Bickham Jr. published in the 1745.
There are a couple of elements in this piece that were first-time challenges - broad edge scripts and reproducing Roundhand-style flourishes created by others.
Unlike letter-based flourishes, there were aplenty decorative flourishes in this artwork. These flourishes are not illustrative and were created to envelope the main header and footer of the piece.
Some of my followers might have seen a flourished piece that I created last year and those were very easy to do because those flourishes were self-designed. While creating those flourishes, I was very clear where I wanted my pen to go to to create a visual balance that was aesthetically pleasing for me personally.
“For the German Flute” by Nichole Tin
Rich Pale Gold Pigments on Black Paper, 420mm x 594mm
Creating flourishes designed by the original artist do need a little bit of getting used to because we are all different individuals. The first step to the reproduction of this artwork calls for a bit of note-taking and studying.
The broad edge scripts were also a challenge too as they are much bigger than the copperplate calligraphy text in the artwork. Note: I have not done broad edge scripts in such scale before!
There are areas that needs to be improved on for this piece but I am quite satisfied with how it turned out (for now!). I might not say the same in a couple month’s time. Let’s review this again in half a year’s time.
The illustrations were also drawn with gold pigments, a calligraphy nib and holder.
“For the German Flute” by Nichole Tin
Rich Pale Gold Pigments on Black Paper, 420mm x 594mm
Interested to see some of my favourite artworks from this exhibition? Coming soon in our next blog post!