Brush, Ink, Paper, Stone - an Intro to Chinese Calligraphy

Free workshops for adults and teens in Wellfleet and Truro

Brush, Ink, Paper, Stone – Intro to Chinese Calligraphy

With the support of the Wellfleet and Truro Local Cultural Councils, Judith Motzkin, an artist based in Cambridge and Wellfleet, is offering four hands on sessions to introduce the origins, history and structure of the Chinese written language and to provide an opportunity to experience calligraphic writing with a brush and ink on rice paper. Motzkin says, “Outer cape residents have little exposure to Chinese culture. Insight into the language is a start to understanding, peace, and friendship between our two peoples.”
The Wellfleet sessions took place at the Wellfleet Library on Saturday, March 2, 2019. Session 1 for kids: 12:00-1:30. Session 2 for adults was on Sunday March 3:  2:00-3:30.

In Truro, the two workshops will take place at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill on Wednesday, April 17.  Adults 1:00-2:30 Teens and Adults 3:00-4:30.

Interested attendees can sign up at www.castlehill.org or email me at jmotzkin@gmail.com.

The workshop will include:

·       Cultural context: The Four Classical Arts, of which calligraphy is one and The Four Treasures of Chinese painting and calligraphy—stone, ink, brush, paper.

·       How to hold and use the brush to make expressive strokes. Care of the bamboo brushes.

·       Introduction of the Eight Basic Strokes used to paint bamboo as traditionally taught with the strokes in the character 永, yong, eternity.

·       Demonstration of the strokes learned as used to paint bamboo with ink on paper.

·       Practice on rice paper with ink to draw the early pictographs, write characters, paint bamboo

·       Examples of the progression from pictographs carved in oracle bones 4000 years ago, through the codification of the written language 2000 years ago.

·       Presentation of a few basic characters and how they are multiplied or combined with other characters to make new words and express concepts. Introduction to the radical/phonetic system.

The presenter, Judith Motzkin, has a degree in Asian Studies from Cornell University. A practicing studio artist in ceramic and mixed media, she continues her lifelong interest in Chinese culture, history and language through study and travel. In 2018, she taught Creative Practice/sculpture in Shanghai.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Wellfleet and Truro Cultural Councils, local agencies  which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

Chinesepod

I have been listening to Chinese podcasts.
I am keeping my ear up if nothing else.

I listen at ChinesePod, a language learning site based in Shanghai. The company, Praxis Language, has newer parallel sites in Spanish, Italian and French.
The level of professionalism, linguistic interest, cultural insight, and pedagogy is quite high.
The lessons and discussions are free. There are membership levels up to someone calling you everyday to tutor you. I listen to the lessons, read some of the discussion, use my dictionaries to absorb character uses. I find myself absorbed in it for an hour or two each time.
The visual language was what first attracted me to study Chinese. Now I find myself wanting to get to the depth of the culture through the language. I want to study again. I would like to learn the language like a child is taught in school. Writing and reciting from classics while practicing the colloquial language every day.