Portfolio:

Calligrapher: Kevin Brown

Welcome to the Museum:

The Museum of Calligraphy is universal. I promise. While at the moment, the momentum of a suspicion may be building: is this just the narcissistic mausoleum of a single, solitary calligrapher? Yes. For the moment. But not, I hope, forever. Even though this is currently a one-man show, there is something you must know. Art is universal. The artist is a prism. Art, thus, is the refraction of experience through the prism of the individual. Rainbows, y’all. I’m talking about rainbows. Now my particular rainbows are all black and white. But even though the products we produce may be varied, there is something about the energy that compels one to produce that is all the same: it feels good to art. So please accept my apologies for the paucity in terms of the number of artists at present…I have done everything by myself. I am a one-man-wizard-of-Oz and I hope you don’t peer behind the curtain. But I just told you what’s behind the curtain! Me! One! Guy! I’m not even a wizard! So have pity on me and give me time to curate the magic of other calligraphers. I have built it. This museum. It is my personal field of dreams. I have absolute faith that they will come. Nay, that they are already here. Waiting in the tall grass.

Overview of the Portfolio:

Jinan.

Perhaps this was my favorite place to live. The street. The apartment. The city. I think I never felt so completely in the right place as I did then. There. That’s not so say I haven’t surrendered and conquered and calibrated and celebrated other places. But there was something about that apartment.

In that apartment, there was a table. Granite-topped. As good as immobile.

I used that table. Adjacent to my bed. One place for dreaming whilst I slept. The other, for dreaming whilst awake. It was here that I began work on Life Sentence.

About the Calligrapher:

I was a young-ish man back then. Below, you can see portraits of the artist as a young-ish man. And what is he doing? Calligraphy. It was his life. Well, he worked. He ate. He slept. He had what they call a personal life. But those things are personal. It was art that provided meaning. It was art that was unexpected. Also, he enjoyed the coastal village of Danshui. And coffee. Too much coffee.