For Immediate Release November 14, 2017
After more than 1000 art shows all over the United States,
beginning in 1983 at “Art in the Alley” in Bedford, Virginia, Susan Loy is
closing her Moneta studio and moving to Prague in the Czech Republic to pursue
new art projects. Susan and her husband, Ron Ayers founded Literary Calligraphy
and have operated a frame shop and internet site on Ron’s family farm for 27
years. From there, with the help of up to six employees, the couple traveled to
shows from Key West to San Francisco, selling art prints and stationery to a
customer list of over 20,000 literature and art collectors.
Loy is best known as the “Artist on the Lawn” at the 1998 White House Easter Egg Roll. Her 2001 book, “Flowers, the Angel’s Alphabet” has become a standard reference for floral dictionaries and the Victorian Language of Flowers. Her web site, literarycalligraphy.com regularly receives over 50,000 hits per month – from Australia to Uzbekistan. In the 2000s, she hand-lettered the entire United States Constitution.
Loy is currently in the process of obtaining a long-stay cultural visa for the Czech Republic. She has several projects planned for her residence and looks forward to the challenge of lettering the 46 characters that make up the Czech alphabet. For example, she proposes to create a watercolor painting to commemorate Czech writer Norbert Čapek’s Flower Celebration. Susan Loy’s artwork will feature a hand-lettered quotation from Čapek’s writings in Czech and in English and a floral wreath with 46 native flowers, one for every letter of the Czech alphabet. She and her husband will use their time in the Czech Republic conducting field studies of native plants, taking photographs and making sketches for the final artwork.
Another of Susan Loy’s Prague projects is Nobel Prize-winning poet, Jaroslav Seifert’s “Four Small Windows,” which presents views from an artist’s studio through four seasons, describing elements of Prague architecture, flora and fauna. Susan Loy proposes to hand-letter the entire poem in Czech and in English in four seasonal pieces that illustrate each with elements from Seifert’s poem. Loy plans to collaborate with contemporary Czech writers on additional projects through contacts she makes while in Prague, through universities, and local writer’s groups. When these projects are complete, she will exhibit them as a series of “Calligraphic Renderings of Prague.”
Susan and Ron are currently on the road exhibiting her Literary Calligraphy at shows on the East Coast during the fall of 2017. It is a bittersweet tour, because of the close bonds that she developed with art collectors and fellow exhibitors over the years. Some of Loy’s images will continue to be available at Amazon.com while they are overseas.
-30-
Online information on Susan and Ron is available here. Background describing her art and techniques is available here.
Contact: Ron Ayers
5326 White House Road
Moneta, VA 24121
540-297-7938
540-521-0079 (cell)
