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Barbara Bash
From Barbara's Webpage (https://barbarabash.com)
I grew up in a household full of words and images and art. My father worked in advertising in Chicago, my mother was a driving force in local arts organizations in the suburbs. There was a lot of communication going on all the time. Perhaps communication binds this story altogether.
I grew up in a household full of words and images and art. My father worked in advertising in Chicago, my mother was a driving force in local arts organizations in the suburbs. There was a lot of communication going on all the time. Perhaps communication binds this story altogether.
After a checkered college career, and some far flung travel, I dropped into a renaissance of book arts in the Bay Area in the 1970s. Working out of a storefront studio in Berkeley I created calligraphic flyers, brochures, invitations and signage, taking on pretty much anything that came through the door. I collaborated with letterpress printers and bookbinders on limited edition books. I was part of an alive Bay Area book arts world.
After a checkered college career, and some far flung travel, I dropped into a renaissance of book arts in the Bay Area in the 1970s. Working out of a storefront studio in Berkeley I created calligraphic flyers, brochures, invitations and signage, taking on pretty much anything that came through the door. I collaborated with letterpress printers and bookbinders on limited edition books. I was part of an alive Bay Area book arts world.
In 1979 I moved to Colorado to join a community of artists and seekers in Boulder studying with the Tibetan meditation teacher Chögyam Trungpa.
In 1979 I moved to Colorado to join a community of artists and seekers in Boulder studying with the Tibetan meditation teacher Chögyam Trungpa.
I began teaching western pen calligraphy at Naropa Institute (later University). At one pointI asked Trungpa if it was appropriate to be teaching a western art form at a Buddhist college and he replied, “You start with your own tradition, go deep with that, and it will lead you to everything.”
I began teaching western pen calligraphy at Naropa Institute (later University). At one pointI asked Trungpa if it was appropriate to be teaching a western art form at a Buddhist college and he replied, “You start with your own tradition, go deep with that, and it will lead you to everything.”
I created a Book Arts program at Naropa with the writer Susan Edwards, offering the art and craft of the handmade book as an interplay of verbal expression and visual form, as well as the hermetic tradition and the contemplative path. Over the next eight years I collaborated with dancers, musicians and storytellers . Jerry Granelli invited me into his jazz improvisation classes to make brushstrokes for his students to “play”. I began to paint in performance. I mapped ancient Sumerian stories as Susan Edwards discoursed on their meaning. My precise nature was stretched by these collaborations. I had to work so large and fast I couldn’t “see” what was happening. I had to I feel my way along with a different kind of knowing.
I created a Book Arts program at Naropa with the writer Susan Edwards, offering the art and craft of the handmade book as an interplay of verbal expression and visual form, as well as the hermetic tradition and the contemplative path. Over the next eight years I collaborated with dancers, musicians and storytellers . Jerry Granelli invited me into his jazz improvisation classes to make brushstrokes for his students to “play”. I began to paint in performance. I mapped ancient Sumerian stories as Susan Edwards discoursed on their meaning. My precise nature was stretched by these collaborations. I had to work so large and fast I couldn’t “see” what was happening. I had to I feel my way along with a different kind of knowing.
It has always been about engaging with the alive line - of the alphabet - the pencil and pen - the brush - the good conversation. I am following a dynamic dialogue with the world - with the page - with others - with myself. The stroke of a life.
It has always been about engaging with the alive line - of the alphabet - the pencil and pen - the brush - the good conversation. I am following a dynamic dialogue with the world - with the page - with others - with myself. The stroke of a life.
David Schneider
Tensho David Schneider had the good luck to meet Buddhist Dharma in 1970 at Reed College. He began sitting in meditation at a small communal Zen house off campus; the place was associated through its residents with the San Francisco Zen Center and Shunryu Suzuki-roshi. Schneider visited the Zen Center several times in 1971—where he chanced also to meet Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche—and moved there in 1972.
Reed was renowned during his time there for the calligraphy courses it offered, begun by the great Italic-handwriting-revivalist, Prof. Lloyd Reynolds, and continued by Fr. Robert Palladino. In those pre-digital years, hand-written signage was everywhere, and the writing at Reed was of very high quality: technically accurate, bold, brilliant, frequently beautiful. Schneider began to study it formally .
Schneider lived in S.F. Zen Center properties from 1972-1988, doing a number of jobs for the community, and undergoing Jukai, Tokudo, and Shuso ordinations. After joining the then-Vajradhatu community in 1988, he became one of the original acharyas in 1996, and specialized his calligraphic studies in Siddham, an ancient Sanskrit writing system.
As an author, Schneider has published many newspaper and magazine pieces, as well as two biographies: Street Zen, Shambhala Publications,1990; and Crowded by Beauty, University of California Press, 2015;
He co-edited, with Kazuaki Tanahashi, Essential Zen, Harper SF 1993;
and published Goods, a book of short stories, from Cuke Press, in 2020.
For more detail on any of this please see tenshodavidschneider.space
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