A Love Letter to Penmanship BY DANA HUCH
If Patricia Sullivan’s handwriting were a performance it would be an opera. Her thick downstrokes bellow with confidence as they glide, plump and graceful, across her page stage. Her soprano upstrokes tiptoe, elegant and stringlike, lightening the tone of the letter. Her whole arm bounces and swings to a tempo as she conducts with a pen baton, telling the inky song how to flow. There is a balance of purposeful composure and expressive freedom in the performance — wild and fast movements followed by slow and careful ones. Sullivan has dedicated intense time and effort to the craft of elegant penmanship. Even through developing her career as a graphic designer in tech vanguard Silicon Valley, she has held tightly to her pen and anachronistic appreciation for the handwritten word. With each advancement, it becomes increasingly apparent that nearly every modern task can be completed more efficiently with the right tool. Sullivan appreciates all of the possibilities new technologies offer, but has realized the value of staying loyal to the art of hand-lettering, now more than ever. Sullivan discovered her passion for penmanship very early on. In her childhood home, a Butte, Montana “bungalow,” she and her three siblings learned how to refine their alphabet with lessons from their mother and grandmother. Sullivan said her artistic side comes from her mother, who would slip handwritten notes into her school
Sullivan and her siblings captured on a home movie.
Sullivan writes her name. bag and make Valentines with sewn-on lace. Her mother nurtured the young artist in Sullivan, teaching her how to translate love into the written word with an uncommon attention to detail. “[My mother] made such a loving home for us back in Montana,” Sullivan said. “We didn’t have a lot of money or anything but she used her artistic talents to create a life of beauty for all of us.” Sullivan described her other penmanship teacher —her maternal grandmother— as “very kind, but very strict.” In addition to their customary penmanship hour in school, Sullivan and her siblings endured an additional hour or two of penmanship exercises with their grandmother when they arrived home. Sullivan’s grandmother saw refined handwriting as a sign of status and formality, so felt it was important that the children practiced a certain technique.
Sullivan’s Valentine keepsakes from her mother.