FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                             29.5.18

Ron Ayers                                                                               420 608 971 631

 

AMERICAN ARTIST IN PRAGUE DEVELOPS CZECH “ALPHABET OF FLOWERS”

 

The Unitarian Flower Communion, Kvetinová Slavnost, on 2 and 3 June at the Prague Unitaria is an early highlight for American artist and calligrapher Susan Loy, who recently moved to Prague with a two-year cultural visa from the Czech Republic. Loy was sponsored by the Czech Unitarian Church and will commemorate Čapek and other Czech writers, including Nobel Prize-winning poet, Jaroslav Seifert, using watercolors, calligraphy pens, and brushes in her unique style of Literary Calligraphy® artwork.

 

Susan Loy is known in the United States for serving as “Artist on the Lawn” at the 1998 White House Easter Egg Roll in Washington, D.C., and for creating a poster featuring White House flowers. Her book, “Flowers, the Angel’s Alphabet” is a standard reference for floral dictionaries and the Victorian Language of Flowers.

 

She’s excited to be in Prague and experience its culture. “Finding 31 species of Czech flowers, corresponding to each letter of the Czech alphabet has been my biggest challenge,” according to Loy, who moved with her husband and two dogs to Prague on 3 April. Once she finalizes her flower list, she can begin hand-lettering quotations from Čapek’s writings in Czech and in English and creating the floral wreath with 31 plants native to Central Europe.

 

Another of Susan Loy’s Prague projects involves Nobel Prize-winning poet, Jaroslav Seifert’s “Four Small Windows,” which Loy plans to hand-letter in Czech and in English in four seasonal pieces. She has already visited some hidden gardens of Malá Strana and the Seminary Garden in Petřin Park in April when all of the fruit trees were in full bloom and plans to research other scenes from Seifert’s poem.

 

These are ambitious projects for Susan Loy, who made her living on the American art and craft show circuit for 35 years in partnership with her husband Ron Ayers, selling reproductions of Loy’s original watercolors at shows and through their website, literarycalligraphy.com. “We want to experience the culture of Prague and create works of art that celebrate the Czech language and culture.” They will use their time in the Czech Republic conducting field studies of native plants, taking photographs and making sketches for the final artwork. 

 

Loy’s development of her “Czech alphabet of flowers” expresses the diversity symbolized by Kvetinová Slavnost, the Unitarian Flower Communion, where individuals bring flowers of various species to a communal vase. The Flower Communion, created by Czech Norbert Čapek, will take place at the Unitaria at Anenska 5, 110 00 Praha 1 on Saturday 2 June at 11 a.m. with the English-speaking International Unitarian Church of Prague and on Sunday 3 June at 10:30 a.m. with the Czech Unitarian Church.

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Wikipedia page for Susan Loy available here. Background describing her art and techniques is available here. On Facebook.

 

Contact: Ron Ayers

Finska 582/1,

Vrsovice 11000 Prague 10,

Czech Republic

420 608 971 631

mail@literarycalligraphy.com