This class meets on Saturday/Sunday: October 19 & 20, 2019
10:00 am to 4:00 pm

Arabic calligraphy now is widely practiced and appreciated for its timeless beauty, a dedication, and patience required to be a master calligrapher. There has been a movement by contemporary artists, introducing styles that are more contemporary, abstract. These styles encompass the rich heritage of calligraphy and infuse it with modern elements, but a knowledge in historic styles is very important.

In recent years many artists both in the East and the West, use calligraphy in their work, painters, decorators, graphic designers, graffiti and tattoo artists and fashion designers. Why we need understanding in calligraphy? Because we have a great wealth of calligraphic styles, which make it quite easy to come up with styles that are contemporary and at the same time based on traditional models. The basic architecture or structure of the letterforms and the many calligraphic variations on the common styles, make it easy to create something new.

Participants will be introduced to Calligraforms, a name I called to the new body of work I produce which is based on appreciating the graphic qualities of letter forms in the world of calligraphy.

“I take special care to work on a contrast between an overall calligraphic statement and the very small details of it, which needs to be looked at as the true quality of individual letters, illustrating its beauty and character. I am in constant dialogue with the shapes generated by the spaces, shadows and silhouettes inside and around the letters. As calligraphers who train in classical scripts, we spend years upon years working towards the mastery of the letters’ forms. We also master the space around them—the positive and negative space, the black and white, the inside and outside of the letters.” —Wissam Shawkat

This workshop will be a combination of theoretical presentations and practical experience; it will start with a presentation lecture about the approach to Calligraforms and how it all started and its influences from other art schools. The practical part will be producing an artwork based on calligraphic letterforms, by drawing, painting or collage.

No previous knowledge in Arabic or calligraphy is required here as participants will purely approach letter forms as an abstract shapes. (read less...)