Beyond Beautiful Writing: The Art of the Love Letter with Jena Argenta
3 Sunday evenings, 5 – 7 pm
Sept. 21, 28, & Oct. 5
$125, $110 members (includes min. materials fee)
Beyond Beautiful Writing: The Art of the Love Letter
Interdisciplinary explorations in writing, in calligraphies, aesthetics, and sensibilities.
Calligraphy is often defined as beautiful writing. In practice, it’s anything but. Ink reveals every hesitation, arrogance, hiding or turning away. Calligraphy, while beautiful, is also trembling & showing up for one’s shortcomings; is incremental shifts in habits in hand & in life; is a visual/historical map of intersecting languages, sacred traditions, & cultural legacies. Students will try out a variety of calligraphic forms—Arabic reed, Chinese brush, as well as hybrid tools (Arabic in the Chinese style).
Elements of calligraphic study & free-writing exercises are then used to explore ink work as a tool of listening & self-awareness. In ink, as in writing, as in life: Each hesitation, impatience, trembling, each flight from love & toward her— each subtle arrogance- shows. However, some of the most beautiful letters deviate & shake—revealing that tender capacity to reach & fail & reach anyway. Because missing the mark, but carrying on in good company, is sometimes the most beautiful thing. The aesthetic here is not first of shape or form, but of showing up.
The first love letter you write will be to yourself.
