Jonathan Root Calligraphy

Introduction: I will be teaching Chinese Calligraphy 書法 in the styles of Ou Yang Xun and Yan Zhen Qing. Students will come to understand the basics of brushwork and character formation in both regular script and cursive script. Further detail on course and curriculum: 永字八法. This method details the character 永, meaning eternal, which has its own pedagogy attached to it, detailing the eight strokes contained within it along with their respective writing methods. The classification of calligraphy as an art or as a literature will be discussed; I discuss calligraphy as a spiritual practice, including the concept of 入靜, referring to the meditative process of entering into stillness. The method of studying single characters is known as 臨帖, which samples the specific character from a specific tablet of a great calligrapher, for example the calligrapher Ou Yang Xun, and places the character in a square, typically with grids, which allows the student to copy and imitate the character itself (assuming an understanding of the stroke order). For a given character, such as 心, meaning heart, one may consider excerpts from famous tablets or poems. For example, the quotation 聖心懷之不忘, as sampled from the tablet Jiu Cheng Gong Li Quan Ming (calligrapher Ou Yang Xun). Some may consider then the character 必，meaning must, which is seemingly 心 along with one extra stroke. The major difference appears in the process of writing the two characters, as the stroke orders are quite different. Credentials: Two years of teaching in Hunan, China. PhD Mathematics BA Mathematics