Many
Scientologists volunteer to help in Criminon. Crime is one of the worst situations in our society today. All of us are affected by it. If we can rehabilitate the men and women in our jails, not only are we safeguarding our communities but we are also giving people back their self-respect, their families and own lives.
Scientology, Scientologist, criminal reform, Criminon
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Scientologist!Labels: criminal reform, Criminon, scientologist, scientology
Old Town resident keeps traditional skill alive
I found this article about a Canadian Scientologist. Thought I'd share it here:
It is "kalos" to "graphien." Huh? In Greek, "kalos" means beautiful and "graphien," to write. Hence, "calligraphy" or "beautiful penmanship." You can look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls.
"Calligraphy by Diane" means beautiful writing by Diane Iannuzziello. "It seemed to be destined to become a dying skill," says the professional calligrapher, who works from her high rise at Richmond and Sherbourne. "They’re not teaching it in the colleges. Since computers, doing it by hand was considered archaic." The painstaking practice originating in China, India and Japan, with pigments from plants and rock and adventures recorded on stone, wood, bark and hand-made paper was in danger of disappearing.
Could an ancient art be angling for a comeback? It seems as though, since business people in the 1990s began using terms such as "carved in stone" and "cobble together," less and less carving and cobbling was actually occurring. It seems a subconscious attempt on the part of the Information Age to hold onto tangible, hand-made things, or at least the words that describe them, as life becomes increasingly and ephemerally digital.
Hand-lettered work is now in high demand among corporations, moving beyond the usual requests for calligraphic reproduction of poems, sayings and eulogies, and wedding and/or bar/bat mitzvah invitations, menus, place cards and guest books. The calm blonde with the perfectly manicured, almond-shaped nails has also serviced Club Monaco, CIBC, U of T, Rogers Communications, CBC and Magna Corp. She letters marketing awards, testimonials, proclamations, and scholarships, as well as the certification documents for the doctors of naturopathy and chiropractic. She counts country clubs, shops and charity ball organizers among her many clients. For movie production house CineNova she taught an actress enough quill-pen calligraphy to be believable in a documentary about the English governess portrayed in "The King and I." Club Monaco in New York hired her hand to letter invitations to Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Julia Roberts, among others.
A nice girl happily raised as Diane Foisy in Sault Ste. Marie, of a Montreal mother and a Franco-Ontarian father from North Bay, with her two brothers and one sister, she was a born artist. "I always had a love of lettering," she remembers. "All I wanted was a piece of paper and a pencil."
She knew she would go to art college, have children and work from home, and she made it happen. Starting out as a professional graphic artist in television and broadcast companies in the Soo and Red Deer, she learned lettering styles on the job, when illustrations were all hand-done.
"I never thought in a million years I would move to Toronto," says Iannuzziello, recalling the transition when her son and daughter were four and eight in July of 1990. "It was very hot and I had a black car with no air-conditioning."
Although her work in sales and marketing thrived, a year later, their lives took an unimaginably tragic turn. While visiting London, where they had lived, her 5-year-old son drowned in a man-made pool on the first day of their vacation.
"I’m a real survivor," says Diane, with no trace of understatement. "You get help spiritually to deal with upsets when you need it." She found it in
Scientology, without which, she says, "I would have been drowning in grief. I was able to be strong for myself and even for others." Last year her sister died, and her granddaughter was born. Another of life’s ironies is that her husband’s daughter was born the same year as hers, and his son, now 19, was born the same year as her lost son. "Life will fill a vacuum for you in other ways," she notes philosophically.
Iannuzziello and Mario, her husband of 11 years, love their Downtown neighbourhood, shopping at St. Lawrence Market on weekends, biking to the Island, babysitting that granddaughter—the apple of her eye—in Bloor West Village, and driving up north to golf and enjoy nature.
Often from 9 a.m. until midnight, at a small drawing table looking south over the city, her many different-sized pens and nibs work away in silver, gold and coppers inks, lettering styles with such names as Copperplate Gothic, Bookhand, French Script and Chancery Italicized. Old English is slower going because of its ornateness, but the work involves more than simply learning and reproducing a style. Although Diane can letter in any style or language, much invisible work goes into it, with original flourishes or a new innately simple script. She works not only with the letters, but also with the spaces around them. "I redo and redo," she says. "I’m so picky with my work." She calls it "art in the written word." Many people have her art on their walls without knowing it because, as a calligrapher, she doesn’t get to sign her work.
Toronto turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to Diane and constitutes an ideal market for her work. "I’m almost 50 and I have not peaked yet with my calligraphy. I’m continuously improving."
Iannuzziello works hard to make her "graphien" "kalos." After all, practise makes perfect and, unlike life, calligraphy needs to be perfect.
See more of her work at
www.calligraphybydiane.com.
Meet a
Scientologist!Labels: Art, caligraphy
