Your Incredible Neighbors: La Posada resident creates extraordinary calligraphy

Though there are just 26 letters in the English alphabet, the way Elsie Schalock writes and draws letters, it seems as if there are hundreds, if not thousands.

She is a calligrapher who’s constantly seeking to improve her masterful skills. Watching her form a letter—any letter—one quickly sees this lady is a pro.

Unlike many calligraphers who create wedding invitations and elegantly address envelopes for guests, Schlalock prefers to combine her calligraphy with art.

Calligraphy means “beautiful writing” and originates from the Greek “kalos” meaning “beautiful” and “graphia” meaning “writing.”

A resident of La Posada with her husband Al, Schalock says she started taking watercolor classes about 35 years ago but got caught up in calligraphy. “I took a five-week course and was very determined to learn,” she recalls.

As for the skills needed to be a calligrapher, she says first there needs to be a desire. Next is the ability to practice and not mind it. “It’s not easy; a steady hand helps,” she says.

Some styles are so ornate the clarity of the letters is overshadowed and Schalock says she likes to be able to read the words.

She is proficient in eight “hands” or styles of calligraphy but the italic style is her favorite. It’s elegant yet easy to read and as she describes it, “it’s flowing.”

Open-minded and artistic, Schalock realizes that different styles of calligraphy work best, depending how the script is being used.

After taking beginning classes and becoming a skilled calligrapher, Schalock says, as an elementary school secretary she was often called upon—or as she says “forced”—into doing certificates, posters, signs and eventually into teaching calligraphy to a sixth-grade class. “I found teaching was what I loved to do and when asked to teach a class at a local community college I agreed to try it for one term. This extended into a 13-year teaching commitment.”

While some consider calligraphy to be solely black letters on white paper, Schalock engages color. Seeing an appealing art print is reason enough for her to add a quote or saying, and with her supply of 100 or more pens, brushes and felt-tip writing tools, the added quote brings an art print to a new level.

Of her stack of pens she refers to her Speedball C-2 pen as “the workhorse.”

She’s taken a quote by Thomas Carlisle and using a brush with muted shades of yellow, ochre and brown made the quote into a framed print.

And so we come to WORDS

Those precious gems of sharp angles

And soft contours,

Shades of meaning

Laid down one over another

Through history.

In addition to many framed art prints in her apartment that are enriched and embellished with calligraphy, Schalock has filled an illustrated but otherwise blank journal-type book with quotes relating to friendship—and each quote is done in a different “hand.”

Having taught calligraphy at Pima Community College for several years, she now teaches the art form at GVR.

All the while she’s teaching, Schalock is always improving herself. She taken advanced classes and workshops in watercolor and calligraphy, has studied with teachers from the U.S., Canada, Australia and England and has attended three international calligraphy conferences.

In 1993, she was a participant in a calligraphy exchange to China.

Just for the love of learning she’s looking forward to taking a class this summer in New Mexico with master calligrapher Bob Phillips.

“He’ll also be teaching a class called ‘Celebrating the Mistakes’ at La Posada, which is open to the public, in January, she says. “He’s a marvelous teacher… He gives what I can’t give.”

Ellen Sussman is a freelance writer in Green Valley. Contact her at ellen2414@cox.net.