Karen Gorst and friends are going to be live at the NYPL's 42nd Street Research Library (the one with the lions) 

New York Public Library 42nd & Fifth Avenue

Friday, April 26, 2013 from 2pm to 5pm

Last year was such a success that the NYPL is having an encore performance! 

As a very young child I loved making letters and watching grown ups write. Fascinated by the way the letters looked individually, as words and as a page of text, I found cursive mysterious like a melodic foreign language. Cursive looked like a chain of crocheted thread- pull the end hard enough and the word would disappear. 

Graphic design trends and technological innovations are only two forces that effect the viability of calligraphy and illumination as professions. Some technologies have enhanced calligraphy's visibility and utility while others have not. Developments in digital scanning, sending files to designers and digital printing have increased the ease of inserting a calligraphic flair into any project resulting in growing demand by graphic designers. Meanwhile, the ease of

Calligraphy is at a critical crossroads. 
With handwriting lessons cut from school curricula, children and adults through 30 year olds use cursive less and less, if at all. The current generation could easily be cursive illiterate- neither able to read nor write cursive. With this loss of cursive writing and reading skills comes a loss of the rudimentary skills needed to write calligraphic hands related to cursive. The rhythmic patterns inherent to copperplate and spencerian letterform, joining of letters and standard variations of flourished capital are just a few of those skills being lost.

I hope things are a bit less scary now.

Hurricane Sandy played a Halloween TRICK on The Gorst Studio! With the final touches on our Halloween Treat, we were transported back to a time before computers, steam heat and electric lights- launched into the darkness. We emerged....