Welcome to the Scriptorium:
Calligrapher and Teacher Lloyd J. Reynolds
Internationally known calligrapher Lloyd J. Reynolds [1902-1978] taught at Reed College for forty years, 1929 to 1969, and at the Portland Art Museum School beginning in 1950. He founded the Western Branch of the Society for Italic Handwriting in 1968. That organization today is known as the Portland Society for Calligraphy. Controversial in his era, as noted in Michael Munk's The Portland Red Guide, Reynolds was one of three Reed professors targeted in the 1954 HUAC hearings. He refused to answer their political questions. Reynolds continued teaching in the community following his retirement. In 1972 Oregon Governor Tom McCall honored Reynolds as the worlds first Calligrapher Laureate and in 1977 he received the Aubrey R. Watzek Award from Lewis & Clark College. His lasting legacy was his ability to teach and engage his students in his creative writing, art history, and studio art classes. Few creative figures, both directly and via talented disciples who extended his vision, have had the local and global impact of Lloyd Reynolds. His holistic humanist view influenced and inspired generations of calligraphers, teachers, type designers, artists, poets and writers including: poets Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, William Stafford and Carolyn Kizer, Apple computers Steve Jobs, screenwriter Ben Barzman, type designer Chuck Bigelow and thousands of others. Presenters are: Bettye Lou Bennett, Inga Dubay, Jaki Svaren, Barbara Getty, Margot Voorhies Thompson, Kim Stafford and invited special guests. Lois Leonard made an exceptional effort to organize this program |
In 1953, I read about Lloyd in Richard Neubergers Saturday Evening Post story on Reed. I wanted to study calligraphy, and Reed had a veterans program. I came to Reed with two young children and a Korean-war-weary husband. Although I had a job as well as the family, I enrolled in Humanities, Philosophy, and Graphic Arts, whose classes at the top of Eliot, were magical hours. Lloyd opened up his world to meletters and their history, literature, and Eastern ways of thought.
I taught with him at the Portland Museum of Art school, and am teaching still. Although I never intended for calligraphy to be my profession, it has been the string along which all my other professionsas photojournalist, writer, artisthave been strung. Whether it is the negative shapes of sky between winter branches, beautiful signs along the way, an envelope or thank-you-note from a calligraphy friend, calligraphy is always present in some form, creating an awareness with which I constantly appreciate the world anew, enriching my life, year after year.
Kajira Wyn Berry in Reed, August 2003
With felt pens squeaking across vast sheets of butcher paper mounted on an easel before us, Lloyd moved with ease through the evolution of two thousand years of western letterforms. His speech was audacious. The intricacy of information imparted through his demonstration and accompanying commentary was exciting and seductive, all of it delivered in his inimitable style, a dazzling performance of insights. At the end, he stood before us, exhaling hard and smiling owlishly, having seen the spark lit in some of us.
Margot Voorhies Thompson in Reed, August 2003
You are the garden. Sharpen up your spade. Flower can be a verb.Flower! Sunlight under dark soilcomes up dandelions. Lloyd Reynolds inThe Calligraphy of Lloyd J. Reynolds |
|
|
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letters combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science cant capture, and I found it fascinating
|
||
Lloyd J. Reynolds Selected MaterialA Festschrift for Lloyd J. Reynolds. Portland, Ore: Reed College, 1966.
Compiled by Lois Leonard, OCHC |
||
Lloyd J. Reynolds Timeline
Complied by Georgianna Greenwood, Berkeley, California |
|
Editing & Design David Milholland www.ochcom.org PO Box 3588 Portland, OR 97208 |
|
Reach OCHC: PO Box 3588, Portland, OR 97208-3588encanto@ochcom.org |