Details
Date: Saturday, May 6th & Sunday, May 7th, 2023
Time: 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM (1 hour lunch break)
1:00 PM - 4:00 PM CDT
AM & PM session breaks
Follow up review time: Thursday, May 11th 6:00PM - 7:00PM
Price: CCS & SWCC Members $120 | Non-Members $130
Class size max 25
This is a Zoom workshop. To register for class: Mail check payable to Wendye Mire • 26 Wilderness Way, Round Rock, TX 78664
*Paypal registration option: Make payment + $4.00 fee to CCS Paypal on home page and text photo of payment screen to 512 413 8855 to complete registration.
Sign up open for CCS members: February 7th, 2023
Sign up open for SWCC members: March 15th, 2023
Workshop participants will have the opportunity to purchase a 32 page full color book published by Mike Gold. Additional Information will be communicated upon registration for purchase directly with Instructor.
Class
The goal is to look beyond the traditional, formal calligraphic model to ways of lettering that may be more suitable for contemporary personal, commercial and fine art. We examine the rules that guide formal scripts and hands in order to understand how and why to break those rules. Through a series of exercises, students practice breaking the rules to create non-traditional, informal, and even abstract letterforms and compositions. We practice with a variety of tools, writing surfaces and media. Students will come away with a better understanding of how to critique contemporary lettering, how to create it and how to design with it. Important layout and design tips will be included throughout the workshop.
Artist Bio
Mike Gold worked as a commercial lettering designer for over 35 years, mostly in the social expressions business. But his real passion is exploring the corridors of calligraphy that have been less traveled, the path where words and letters are design elements with which to play with line, shape and form, where creating a visual statement is more important than writing a readable text. In both his professional and personal art, Mike breaks traditional rules to create contemporary, non-traditional work.
Collaboration has been a feature of some of his personal work. He especially cherishes the work and teaching he did with Judy Melvin and his 25-year involvement with Scribes 8, a collaborative group based in New Mexico. Over the last 15 years or so Mike has worked mostly on his own, developing a practice that builds on the traditions of the past, influenced by art and artists of all kinds. Being a calligrapher in the 21st century, Mike has matured at a time when calligraphers are moving calligraphy in new directions, creating new traditions, just as all artists have done over time. He still make beautiful letters and write out texts, but also explores the abstract, the illegible and the conceptual.
Teaching calligraphy to inmates at a women’s prison is his most unusual teaching experience. His most unusual commission comes from Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli, who reproduced one of Mike’s designs on a line of clothing. Mike has an M.A. in Visual Communications and has studied with many outstanding lettering and design masters over the years. Mike has taught around the country and at several international calligraphy conferences. His personal work has been featured in Letter Arts Review many times over the past 25-plus years. He is the author of Lines to Live By (available through John Neal, Bookseller), which is Mike's take on being a non-traditional calligrapher in the 21st century.
To see more of Mike’s work, please go to his website https://www.mikegold-letterarts.com or check him out on Instagram @goldie2452.
