Gina Jonas
Calligrapher Gina Jonas is living in St. Augustine, Florida, USA
Professional experience: 41 years as a freelance calligrapher
Author: Finding the Flow: A Calligraphic Journey (2006) and Calligraphy as Art and Meditation: A New Approach (2018).
Gina Jonas many years teaching workshops, classes, and private students.
DESCRIPTION OF CREATIVE WORKSHOP (distance)
To practice calligraphy as meditation, we cultivate greater awareness of ourselves as human beings. Through guided exercises, we explore the vital relationships between mind, breath, tool, surface, and form. Becoming present, using the breath and the senses, we discover our own expressive potential through the movement, energy, rhythm, and feeling of written letterform. In this practice, we also cultivate kindness and patience as we allow ourselves to slow down, and to learn at our own pace for our own purposes.
This workshop aims to develop your confidence and your creative potential.
Calligrapher Gina Jonas will lead the joint workshop with Ona Bajorinienė Calligraphy as Meditation.
Preparation of participants: no experience necessary.
Number of participants: max 15 people.
Tools and materials will be provided by organizers.
We will communicate in English at this distance workshop. An interpreter will help communicate.
DETAILED SCHEDULE
5th of October
5.00 pm. Introduce joint workshop with Ona Bajorinienė
Ona’s Workshop: “Good Words”
Gina’s Workshop: An Introduction to Calligraphy as Meditation
5.45 – 6.15 pm. Embodiment exercises
Body awakening sequence
The “Prototool” (index finger): introduces the concept of a tool as an extension of your body
“Compass”: directing line as a mental, rhythmic, and felt experience
6.15 – 7.15 pm. Alphabet exercises:
Introduction to “Playball”: a warmup alphabet focusing on movement
Letter elements (shape and line), visualizing and spacing
7.15 – 8.00 pm. Writing exercise: “Good Words” and/or your name. Introducing the expressive potential of written words through design elements of weight, line direction, spacing, repetition.
6th of October
5.00 pm. Introduce our complementary exercises:
Ona: Acquaintance with Colors
Gina: Sensitizing Exercises: Contact and Gesture
5.10 pm. Acquaintance with Colors
6.00 – 6.30 pm. Contact and gesture exercises to awaken touch and muscular movement
Energizing body and hand warmup
Gestural movement (2 pencils)
Sensitizing exercises: pressure, pushing, and pulling – the forces that connect us to the writing surface, and energize us.
6.30 – 7.15 pm. Alphabet exercises:
Introduction to “Jumprope,” an alphabet featuring contact and gesture
Letter elements (shape and line)
Letterform as visual pattern, repeated and free
7.15 – 8.00 pm. Writing exercise: “Good Words” and/or your name.
Suggestions for experimenting with expression through:
Design elements, and
Different tools
7th of October
5.00 pm. Introduce our complementary exercises:
Ona: “Boundary Exercise”
Gina: “Graphopoeia”
5.10 pm. Boundary exercise
5.45/6.00 – 7.30/7.40 pm. “Graphopoeia”: an exploration of calligraphic expression
Explain Graphopoeia and “calligraphic empathy”: where verbal language (a word) becomes visual expression
Choosing your word
Graphopoeia: an exercise in imagination—discovering letters as “characters,” as expressive enactments of thoughts and feelings. This is fun…it invites a sense of play!
Last 15 or 20 minutes: sharing your thoughts.
Workshops will be held at the Klaipėda Faculty of the Vilnius Academy of Arts in the auditorium named after Prof. A. Kliševičius. Address Daržų st. 18, Klaipeda
The digitized works of the participants of the creative workshops will be exhibited on the website of the School of Calligraphy and Lettering Art: https://www.ink4.art/ and on the school social accounts.