In this workshop we will move through a series of exercises using unusual and experimental writing instruments. Starting with small hand movements, we will gradually engage the arm, shoulder and finally the whole body to make large gestural marks, letters and texts. Students will be asked to change their movements and mental state to express a range of emotions. We will look at how the hand and arm can alter its trajectory to produce a line that lives and a mark that communicates on an emotional level.
These exercises are equally valuable to calligraphers and letter designers. For a calligrapher/typography, this workshop will show how line, flow and energy can produce new and expressive letterforms.
Brody Neuenschwander is a text artist and calligrapher. He studied at Princeton University and the Courtauld Institute, where he completed his PhD in 1986. At the same time he studied calligraphy at the Roehampton Institute.
From the start, Neuenschwander asked serious questions about the place of calligraphy in the modern world. What is it? How is it used? Where should it be headed?
In 1989 Neuenschwander began a twenty year collaboration with director Peter Greenaway, providing live-action calligraphy for the films Prospero’s Books and The Pillow Book, as well as for the operas Writing to Vermeer and Columbus and many other projects.
Though the mark of the pen is usually present in Neuenschwander’s work, so are typographic letters, scratched letters, drawings and paintings. The question his work constantly asks is, "Is this an image or is this a text?"
In 2004 Neuenschwander taught at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, researching the development of text art in the 20th. Recently projects have included video installations, stained glass, monumental texts in metal and stage performances with live calligraphy.
Neuenschwander’s work attempts to bridge the gap between conceptual art and the acts of drawing, painting, writing. Neither the medium nor the message is the message. Both are involved in the dialectic between the artist and his experience of the world.