Hold a seashell to your ear and hear the ocean. Look at one of Christy Schroeder-Lloyd’s beautifully penned seashells and experience the grace, beauty, and style of her calligraphy. That sense of style and calm fills her Pilgrim’s Quill Studio in Blaine.
Accomplished in calligraphy, designing, and writing in six different hands — or styles — of calligraphy, Christy’s business has been thriving since 2010. She’s hand-penned wedding invitations and stationery, marriage vows, birth announcements, as well as certificates of appreciation and event packets, many for corporations. In addition to her own designs, she works with clients who arrive with an idea, which she helps bring into existence.
Christy brings years of study to her practice of the art. Her intrigue began when she was 10 years old and her grandfather gave her a calligraphy kit. It was a hobby through high school and peaked for her when she was a student at Whatcom Community College and took a class from one of the acknowledged masters of the form, Denys Taipale-Knight. That was in 1990. Denys, and her husband Stan, world-renowned in the calligraphic universe, became mentors to Christy. They taught her from a tradition of centuries.
“The lineage of calligraphy is fascinating,” Christy says. She remains grateful to have had the tutelage of people trained in calligraphy out of the English tradition, encompassing lettering and illustration.
For the last two years, she’s been inscribing oyster and clam shells with the delicate lettering of quotes she collects. The sea-tossed curly crevices, ridges, and ripples of the shells provide a striking contrast for the elegant and simple messages she uses from scripture or prose. She letters them free-hand, to create a one-of-a-kind art piece. The appeal is in the words and the medium, for sure, allowing people to own or give as a gift a tiny art piece.
“This is art that is three dimensional,” says Christy. “You can hold it and touch it and place it near you.”
The preparation is simple: she cleans the shells with soap and water and writes directly on the surface. She may add color to the ruffled edges of a shell and, occasionally, to the interior before she writes, just to bring out the luster. The finished shell is sprayed with clear acrylic.
“I try to use positive, good intentioned quotes to encourage people,” Christy says. “Each shell, like each person, is different and I add little tags that remind us we may all have little imperfections, but are still unique and beautiful.”
The pens she uses for this delicate work are Copperplate lettering pens. The nib of one splits with the proper pressure to achieve the changes in the line dimensions.
It might seem like magic, but the skill can be taught.
Christy completed a degree in anthropology from Western Washington University, which deepened her respect for what the past brings to the present and future.
A teacher for years, Christy welcomes students to join her classes at Pilgrim’s Quill. She teaches the traditional hands of calligraphy and a technique she calls “whimsical letters,” based on formal Roman letters. Her unique style breaks down the forms into four basic shapes that people can easily recognize: waisted stem, oval, narrow arch, horseshoe. As students become fluid in creating the shapes, they begin to combine them into whimsical letters and then learn how to add color.
Christy uses markers and colored pencils, and prepares meticulous worksheets and color guides for her students. Classes are small — four to eight people — so there’s lots of personal attention.
Christy’s lovely shells are displayed in the new Blaine Art Gallery, a project of the Blaine Arts Council. She is one of several artists whose work is featured in the pretty gallery. This is the gallery’s inaugural year, and the artists will turn it into a holiday gift shop during the month of December. The shells range in price from $10 to $25 and are one of the unusual gifts you will find at the gallery.
Christy not only styles elegant calligraphy for the outside world, but she also brought it into her own life, having designed the wedding invitation for her marriage six years ago.
Her art is filled with connections from that first gift of her grandfather’s through to her marriage. The couple, Christy and Steve, met through loss. Steve’s late wife was Christy’s late husband Paul’s nurse who, sadly, passed 19 days after Paul. Christy and Steve, who had not yet met then but knew of each other through the connection, checked in on each other occasionally and then met in a grief group. Drawn together out of other loves, they found their own.
“Beauty from ashes,” she says, with a loving smile. “I love my art. I struggle with the pull of life in different directions, but it’s a talent I’ve been given to share.”
