Words for Peace

Words for Peace: The Calligraphy of Thomas Ingmire

When:  Tues., Dec. 14, 2007 – Sun., March 2, 2008
Where:  Lobby and Concourse Galleries
Conversation with the Calligrapher: Fri., Dec. 14, 2:00 pm

Thomas Ingmire was the first American elected to England’s Society of Scribes and Illuminators craft membership status. His art training is primarily the result of the study and completion of a BA in Landscape Architecture at The Ohio State University and an MLA at the University of California, Berkeley. Ingmire’s life as an artist began in the early 1970s when he began to study calligraphy and medieval painting technique reinforced by a year of post graduate study undertaken in the Art Department at California State University, Los Angeles. In 1980 he received a Newberry Fellowship for independent study and research at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Since that time, Ingmire has become one of the forerunners of the calligraphic movement in the United States. He has taught calligraphy since 1978, conducting workshops throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan. In both his teaching and in his own work, Ingmire has focused on the exploration of the relationship between words and image.

The exhibition will present Ingmire’s calligraphic work drawn from the History Center of The San Francisco Public Library as well as recent work remaining in the artist’s collection. Thomas Ingmire’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and is a part of The San Francisco Public Library’s Special Collections, The Newberry Library in Chicago, The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, as well as many other public and private collections throughout the world.

In March of 2003, dismayed by both the imminent war in Iraq and ongoing U.S. defiance of the global community, Ingmire invited eighty friends and colleagues to participate in a collective calligraphic project on the subjects of war, fear, and peace. Each person was asked to write out a statement on a 20”H x 5”W sheet of paper with the idea of arranging these pieces into a work that would be shown as part of the Friends of Calligraphy exhibit, Kalligraphia X, at the San Francisco Public Library. In addition those eighty calligraphers were to invite their friends, families, and colleagues to contribute statements; children, in particular, were encouraged to take part. More than 750 people from twenty-eight nations responded.

In Ingmire’s words “This is how the project began, but it is not really easy to describe what this project is or what it has become. The answer to these questions seems to depend upon who you are and what you believe. Some see it as an anti-war protest. Others look at it as a statement about freedom and a plea for world peace that asks each of us to live in this world responsibly. It has been criticized as being unpatriotic and anti-American, and praised, on the other hand, as standing for the essence of what it means to be an American. Perhaps it is all of these things, but ultimately it is a demonstration of the power of passion and of the creative spirit. The beauty and expressiveness of the hand written mark, from the untrained writing of four year olds to the masterly calligraphy of the greatest living scribes, is on display. The project shows how individual efforts can be brought together to create a whole that is even richer than its parts... an apt symbol in itself for the idea of a peaceful world."

First displayed at the San Francisco Public Library, followed by exhibitions at the Velvet da Vinci and Canessa Galleries of San Francisco, the exhibition, “Words for Peace,” currently on display at the Fresno Art Museum was installed by Akiho Sugiyama and Kasumi Atsuta assisted by the Museum’s preparator, Steve Ruppel. At the conclusion of Fresno’s exhibition, the individual works will be bound together into a series of small books that will eventually be housed at the San Francisco Public Library’s Special Collections Department.

Exhibits Underwriters

We appreciate the generosity of the following organizations and individuals for sponsoring the Winter Exhibitions at FAM:

  • James and Coke Hallowell
  • Dumont Printing
  • Electric Motor Shop
  • Bonner Family Foundation
  • Women's League
  • Harriett R. Stratton Trust
  • Mrs. Jane Cleave