Roann Mathias Calligraphy

Abstract calligraphy in paper

2014-02-12T16:20:00.000-06:00

These are hand made papers with black hemp string embedded in them. The process involves placing the string in between two sheets of wet paper. I arranged the string to give the look of abstract calligraphy, or ascemic writing.

One of the first trial sheets:

Small book closed:

Small book opened:

One part of a larger, accordion book, with the light shiny through from the back:

The outside of the accordion book, with all the strings hanging out:

Detail:

Inside of the accordion book (above)

Recycled Denim Paper

2014-02-10T19:19:00.000-06:00

It was finally sunny enough today to photograph the denim papers. The darkest ones were all denim, and then I gradually added more cotton fiber to lighten the color.

They are about 10" X 13." I made them on the thin side, but you really can't see this from the photos.

Making paper from recycled jeans

2014-02-03T11:51:00.000-06:00

This is the beginning of my third semester in grad school at Memphis College of Art. I am continuing with paper making and wondering why I waited so long to try it. MCA has an exceptional area for paper making, thanks to retired Professor Dolph Smith. His daughter-in-law, Colleen, is now teaching the class, and this week we worked on making paper from recycled fabrics. I used old jeans, and here is what the process of breaking down the fabric looks like:

Mixing and breaking down the fabric in the beater:

The broken down fabric after only 10 minutes:

Foam building up from detergent residue in washed clothes:

The pulp after about 30 minutes:

The paper turned out beautifully! Pics to follow when it's not so cloudy outside!

Thanks for looking!

New Handmade Paper

2013-11-12T07:37:00.000-06:00

For the past few weeks I have changed gears from eco-printing to making paper by hand. I used my own lettering to create a stencil to shape the paper. My goal is to make a lot of these sheets and form them into a book.

Eco-printed books and some lettering

2013-10-28T14:15:00.002-06:00

Here are some of the books using the papers I made with the eco-printing technique.

Coptic bound book, 6" X 9" closed

Japanese stab binding, arrow pattern, 5" X 8"

Over the weekend the Memphis Calligraphy Guild hosted Carl Rohrs for a lettering workshop. He is one of the best teachers I have ever had! The class covered both pen and brush calligraphy. Both of these samples were done with a large pen. The letters are about an inch high.

Eco-printing with heat

2013-10-22T14:56:00.001-06:00

The second method of eco-printing with heat involved steaming the papers, rather than boiling them. After wetting down several sheets of Arches Text wove, I layered them using mostly leaves and red onion skin, and a few rose petals.

The papers were tied with string and weighted down with some 12 X12" tiles, and placed on a rack in a large roasting pan. I filled the bottom of the pan with boiling water, and covered the whole thing with foil. Then I let it steam for about 1 hour in a 225 degree oven.

Here is what it looked like after I took it out of the oven:

I covered them with a large plastic trash bag, and weighed them down to sit overnight, The hardest part was waiting until morning to open them up and look at all of them. Here are the results:

Here is the book that I made using those papers and a Japanese stab binding technique:

It's about 5" X 8". This method produces very subtle dyes and leaf impressions.

Thanks for looking and comments!

More Eco-printing

2013-10-15T07:47:00.002-06:00

My first pages of eco-printing, using boiling water and raw vegetables, were less exciting than I had hoped. The onion skins gave the best result, but the vibrant chard, cabbage and red onion just dissolved. While looking into eco-printing online, I came across the technique of flower pounding, which involves using fresh flowers or plants and a hammer. This caused me to wonder if I could use some kind of pressure, like that created by a die-cutting machine, to get the same results. Here's what happened:

I cut thin strips of both red cabbage and radicchio. And I found a large bouquet of flowers on sale. I used my Big Shot die cutting machine -- limiting the size of the pages to 6" X 9". These pages will be bound for a book, so I folded a 9" x 12" piece in half. Once I arranged the leaves and flowers, I folded the paper, and ran it through the BIg Shot. It was surprisingly messy! I'm pretty sure that this machine was not meant for pressing plants.

Here are some test strips, using rose petals, parsley, chrysanthemum petals and radicchio.

Detail of rose leaf -- the leaf itself did not print, but it picked up the color that was released from the petals.

Lilies, parsley and dyed baby's breath:

Parsley, rose petals and mum petals:

Detail of parsley leaves:

In all I printed 24 pages, and plan to try more. The process has that element of unpredictability that I really like having in all my work.

First attempts at eco-printing

2013-10-11T19:21:00.000-06:00

In grad school I am taking a bookbinding class. We are using a lot of processes to print on paper. Our professor wants us to try eco-printing, so here is what I have done so far.

I started with a lot of enthusiasm at the grocery buying these colorful veggies. I thought that the swiss chard would leave a lovely pattern. The paper is my favorite -- Arches Text Wove. I layered two sheets of paper with purple onion skins, purple cabbage and flower petals. Then I rolled them up and tied them with string.

Next step -- boiling the bundles in water. Some instructions said to boil for about 3 hours. Luckily I took out the first bundle after only one hour, because the ones that I left in for the full time were completely washed out. Nothing printed...very disappointing.

These two pages are the Arches Text wove, as soon as they were cool enough to handle, and still wet. The onion skin is on the bottom photo on the right. The faint blue/purple areas are from the purple cabbage.

Here are the papers dried. They have a green tint because of the leaves and chard that I rolled up in them.

This was my first attempt. I am not sure if the other papers didn't "print" because they were boiled too long, or because I was using fresh (not dried) materials. So, I will be spending my fall break trying different methods, and also working with dead leaves -- providing that the leaves actually change in time. We have no fall color yet here in Memphis.

Works in progress

2013-09-29T14:22:00.000-06:00

This fall I started my second semester of grad school at Memphis College of Art. I am working on two different series of works combining calligraphy with painting and bookbinding. Here are some in progress:

These are canvasses and wood panels, covered with joint compound. I inscribed some unusual "letterforms"and then painted over with acrylic glazes. More to follow as they develop.

Photos from Phoenix workshop "Casual Caps"

2013-09-29T13:25:00.000-06:00

The Phoenix calligraphy guild hosted my for a weekend workshop the weekend of Sept.14th. Here are some photos of their classwork:

The Summit International Calligraphy Conference

2013-09-19T05:33:00.000-06:00

This summer's calligraphy conference was held in Colorado Springs. It was an inspirational venue. It was a relatively small conference, and felt like a giant family reunion. Here are some photos of my time there.

This is the view of Pike's Peak from the window of our classroom.

I was in Laurie Doctor's class, Resolute Imagery. It was a 5 day class, and by the end all of us had bonded as a group. Here are two of the large pages that were later cut down to create a journal:

I also worked on some large paintings: acrylic washes on a large sheet of Arches Text Wove paper

Here's an opening spread from my journal:

Vendor's show -- handmade brushes by Keith Lebenzon

More scenery:

From Show and Share -- pieces from Yukimi's class:

Our class's table at Show and Share:

More art from grad school

2013-05-15T08:26:00.000-06:00

Since I started school mid-year, I felt a bit behind. Everyone kept telling me that one's first semester is for experimentation. So, this is me experimenting! These pieces are on watercolor paper with gesso and gouache. They were all done over older unfinished pieces. For the last several years I have been operating under the motto "use what you have." That includes using up old practice pieces, fragments of journals, and discarded scraps of paper. My process is intuitive, with a lot of things happening spontaneously and unpredictably. It is fun, but it is a lot harder than it looks. The wonderful thing about using gesso is that if something doesn't look good, you can always go over it with another layer of gesso.

First Semester as a grad student at Memphis College of Art

2013-05-13T19:05:00.000-06:00

Well, I made it through! My decision to start school happened so fast, there was literally no time to make the transition from the home-body I had become to a student in an intense graduate program. I went from zero to sixty in about a week! My head was still spinning at midterms.

Most of the students there are the same age as my own children. Surprisingly, it gave me a bit of an advantage. But it was also really disconcerting to be in classes with twenty-somethings who were perfectly comfortable sitting and doing their work on the studio floor. Most of them had no clue about my background, and of course never bothered to ask! The undergrads who were in one class with me were shocked when they started seeing what I was doing.....not to brag, but just to say what a surreal time it was.

There are so many more details, things that I have shared with friends during the last 4 months about the quality of craftsmanship, the issue about doing "conceptual" art, and my serious doubts about going through with this. Email me if you want to hear more.

Here are some photos:

I started out with these rapid gesture exercises. After about 3 days of this, I had done over a hundred of them. My plan was to crop them into squares, and arrange them somehow.

I ended up scanning in the best of the gestures, about 80 of them, and then cropping them using Photoshop. Then I printed out all those rectangular cards (above) and cutting them out. And then arranging them.

This was the finished project, mounted on a wall as an "installation piece." (Installations are really hot right now in the contemporary art world, apparently. I'm more of a painting and book person, so this was a new idea to me.)

And here is another version -- the cards are folded in half and mounted on the wall as an accordion book.

These works on paper with sumi and walnut ink followed:

Then these with collaged pieces from old calligraphy practice sheets:

All of those pieces were done for what I call "independent" study. This was in addition to the classwork that I did for the undergraduate drawing class that I took. Thanks for looking and I will post more tomorrow!!!!

CREATE New Jersey

2012-05-08T13:42:00.002-06:00

I am so excited that I will be teaching at CREATE New Jersey this summer. If you are looking for something to do in July, check this out!
On Wednesday July 18 I will be teaching a lettering class during the day. Here are some photos:

In the evening on Wednesday I will be teaching "Tiny Beaded Book." It's a small book with a coptic binding with beads.

Mixed media demo at Memphis Calligraphy Guild

2012-04-11T15:40:00.000-06:00

At the Memphis Calligraphy Guild's meeting on Monday, I demonstrated several mixed media techniques. Here are some photos:

Samples of crackle paste and light molding paste on canvas:

Full size view of mixed media painting:

Detail of crackle medium on canvas:

Detail view of small collage pieces, with faux encaustic techniques:

This is an acrylic skin, made by spreading soft gel medium onto a sheet protector, and letting it dry overnight:

Experimenting with different placements of the skin:

The skin, trimmed and pasted onto a painting using fluid matte medium. It will dry clear.

GIlded Envelope Book

2012-03-28T19:47:00.000-06:00

In October I learned a new book structure (new to me). It was a book constructed with folded envelopes. Cutting the ends off each envelope created side pockets that are great for holding tags and other inserts. I fell in love with this concept and have been experimenting with it since then. This book combines that idea with experimental gilding techniques. Here are a few photos:

Gold applied over acrylic gloss medium:

View of several folds:

Light molding paste applied with a heart stencil, then gold added:

Full sheet of gold leaf applied, then painted over and stamped:

On this page – variegated gold leaf, and gold applied with stamps:

Another view of several of the pages:

I will be teaching some of these gilding techniques at Holy Angels Convent, April 20-21.

More photos from the Philly workshop

2011-11-10T15:28:00.001-06:00

Here are a few more photos from the weekend workshop in Philadelphia:

The lettering was done with parallel pens filled with either gouache or Twinkling H2Os.

Neuland Workshop in Philly

2011-11-09T20:09:00.002-06:00

Over the weekend I taught Neuland with the Parallel Pen for the Philadelphia Calligraphers' Society. They worked really hard, lettering most of the afternoon on both Saturday and Sunday. Here is what they did all weekend:

Lettering on black paper with gouache in a parallel pen:

Lettering on black paper with twinkling H20s in a parallel pen:

Everyone's finished books, showing all the techniques they learned in class:

Cloth Paper Scissors chooses 2012 artisans!

2011-10-14T09:00:00.000-06:00

This morning I was so excited to find out that I was selected as Cloth Paper Scissors' artisan of the year for 2012 in the Art Journaling and Bookmaking category!!! You can see the inside pages here: A Page a Day. I am so honored that my journals were chosen. Here are the photos of the winning books:

As always, thanks for looking!

Cool News

2010-12-09T21:43:00.003-06:00

A few years ago I was a featured artist in Somerset Studio magazine. Now they have a new publication that is a compilation of previous articles, and my work has been included. You can see the magazine here:

As always, thanks for looking!

Sneak Peak of Rozelle Sketchbook

2010-09-02T16:32:00.011-06:00

Here are some pages from the latest sketchbook event that I am participating in:

You can see more about the project at: http://www.facebook.com/rozelleartistsguild?ref=ts

Cool2Craft - Eileen Hull - ScoreBoards by Sizzix - TeaCup Blog Hop

2010-06-12T11:11:00.001-06:00

Here is a video of Eileen showing all the teacup designs that were done in the blog hop earlier this spring.

Sizzix Tea Cup Blog Hop

2010-04-13T10:11:00.009-06:00

Here's a sneak peak of my decorated Sizzix teacup. To see the rest of the photos go to: http://www.roanndesigns.com/blog/?p=362 after 9 AM on Wednesday 4/14.

Journal Art set to music

2008-10-13T18:12:00.005-06:00

This is my first "music video" featuring calligraphy from various journals and the song by Norah Jones called "Those sweet words."

And here is a video of me lettering in our class this summer in Chicago, thanks to Hiroko Shimizu:

Student Work from Black Magic Workshop

2008-09-24T10:29:00.007-06:00

The St. Louis Calligraphy Guild had me in to teach Black Magic over the weekend. The workshop is about using color on black paper for lettering. Everyone worked really hard, and there were lots of oohs and aahs as they saw how amazing these colors look on black paper. Here are some samples of what they created.

We started by mixing 12 shades of gouache and then testing samples on different kinds of black paper. We used Fabriano Ingres, Bugra black and Arches cover black.

Then we moved on to testing Pearl-ex pigments and Twinkling H2Os:

Here is one table covered with samples of lettering done by the class on the second day:

These two were done by a left-handed calligrapher using a parallel pen: