EXHIBITION EL ZAGUÁN
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Art inspired by Shakespeare's writings by Tom Leech and Patricia Musick
PURCHASE WORKS ONLINE HERE IN THE SHAKESPEARE GALLERY
Exhibition continues through June 15, 2020
Closing receiption TBD. Open by appointment as of May 19. Please email melanie@historicsantafe.org to set up an appointment.
Historic Santa Fe Foundation presents the exhibition Something Wicked This Way Comes, a colloborative show from Tom Leech, a Santa Fe papermaker and marbler, and Patricia Musick, an accomplished Colorado calligrapher and artist, inspired by some of Shakespeare's most famous lines.
Currently, our monthly Salon El Zaguán will be a virtual presentaion. We have scheduled this event for April 23 (Shakespeare’s birthday!), featuring paper marbling in El Zaguán Garden with Tom Leech. We hope to offer this demonstration as a live video and offer as a recording on our site.
Finally, we will post an online exhibiton of the Shakespeare inspired pieces. More details in the next few weeks' email announcements on the reception date, marbling demonstration, and online exhibition.
About the Exhbition:
Santa Fe papermaker and marbler Tom Leech, and Patricia Musick, an accomplished Colorado calligrapher and artist, have created works based on some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines. This is the artists’ fifth Shakespeare collaboration since 1993. Previously, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labours Lost, The Tempest, and Hamlet came under their scrutiny, and examples of those collaborations are included in this show.
After the artists select lines and passages from a play, Tom then “translates” those lines into traditional and experimental marbled designs on handmade paper. Pat then responds, in calligraphic lettering, to the marbled papers and the passages. Always evocative of mystery and drama, marbled papers have decorated the covers and endpapers of books since Shakespeare’s time. In the Middle East, marbled paper was paired with calligraphy for at least a century before then. In recent years, marbling has enjoyed a renaissance and is now recognized for its expressive and abstract qualities, while contemporary calligraphy balances legibility with the abstract qualities of letterforms.
Shakespeare didn’t really say “The show must go on” – but he should have. According to Patricia Musick, many of these memorable quotes “seem to have strong resonances with today.”