December 25, 2002
Eclectic artist draws on ancient art work
Sue Nellis creates illuminated manuscripts, parchment craft and words written on rice
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Turning to ancient craft spurred by divine inspiration, Sue Nellis of Lake Ann is an eclectic artist.
Completely self-taught, Nellis combines her many interests, including illuminated manuscripts, papermaking, beading, calligraphy, silver smithing, and a parchment craft called relievo into what she calls "jewelry for the wall."
Despite spending hundreds of hours per piece, she gives most of her work away to friends or family as gifts. Her reward is the journey - the process of creation - as Nellis is driven by the need to create and explore works that incorporate a variety of ancient arts.
"The ancient arts started from the Earth, used all Earth materials and became part of the Earth," she said. "It has such a neat history, the ancient arts.
Her resulting pieces are truly unique and totally her creation. In her latest incarnation, Nellis writes the poems, transcribes them by hand using calligraphy, then decorates around them in a variety of media. She combines the traditional craft of monks from the Middle Ages, who transcribed and illustrated manuscripts, with the traditional parchment craft of nuns who made prayer cards.
Nellis relished combining the masculine and feminine elements of each craft into a modern hybrid that honored both traditions. The seemingly endless painstaking steps required to create either a manuscript or a prayer card entranced her.
"I first started getting involved with illuminated letters because I thought they looked like jewelry," Nellis noted. "I combined a couple of different processes to make my own thing."
Her "own thing" defies categorization. Even Nellis' business card reflects the enormous scope of her vision: she calls herself a modern scribe, an illuminator and an artificer.
"I like to dabble in all kinds of art," Nellis said. "I love proverbs and poetry, written words and communication, Latin verse and ancient poetry."
"I am really interested in the ancient script, the origin of the written word," she added.
Her inspirations come from innumerable places and she has been known to lose 17 hours at a stretch creating something in her meticulously organized workshop.
"Sometimes you don't even realize the world is going on around you," Nellis said.
Nellis has also worked with eggs, using a wax resist technique to create detailed, full-color scenes, whose inspiration ranges from New Age to deeply religious to whimsical. She mounts or suspends her eggs on handmade stands that are works of art in themselves, incorporating her beading and jewelry making skills.
"The egg is Mother Nature's most perfect shape so for me it ends up being the ultimate canvas," Nellis said.
Nellis work evolves as she goes, sort of an organic process where the medium or subject seems to guide her.
"I don't put a lot of forethought into it, as I work it just sort of happens," she noted.
Then there's her rice writing, where she literally writes an inspiration word on a grain of rice. She discovered that monks and nuns from the Far East wrote on rice, uncovering one unconfirmed story that had a monk write 100 words on one piece of rice. Nellis speculates that rice writing was a form of meditation because it was such a detailed, miniature pursuit require intense concentration.
"One thing led to another so I started writing on rice, just to see if I could do it," she said.
Another direction was inspired by a quote she read about handwriting looking like jewelry; Nellis figured, 'Well, why not?' She began incorporating letter styles from illuminated manuscripts with her work with eggs and beading to make unusual jewelry. She gives the ancient style of letters a more modern feel with vibrant or unusual colors.
"Right now my jewelry is only in two galleries but I'm not an assembly line person," she said.
Nellis and her family moved to Lake Ann from the Upper Peninsula a year ago and she is still settling into the area. With a retail job by day, Nellis concentrates on her art at night and on weekends. She is hoping to start a calligraphy club to find other artists interested in paper and letter arts. Nellis entitled her club Inkwell and Prosper and has posted flyers in a few places hoping to flush out like-minded people who want to learn and grow artistically together as they explore letter arts.
"I've always been so isolated, before computers came out I was living in Timbuktu," said Nellis of her previous remote Upper Peninsula home. "I want to be able to share these arts and learn, I feel like I'm a baby budding artist at this, that there's a lot left to learn."
For more information on the Inkwell and Prosper Calligraphy Club, contact Sue Nellis at tcinkwell@yahoo.com.