they really asked for my opinion. They would include me to be a part of it. They may have completely
thrown out everything I ever said, but I didn’t know that at the time.”
When Crittenden went to GVSU, her major in art was more of a general study with an emphasis on hands-on
art, she said, “because I knew I wanted to use it for therapy. It was very tactile. There was lots of pottery. I
took some weaving, some generalized painting. I knew I wanted hands on instead of, say, fine art painting.”
That class in calligraphy fit that bent.
“I loved that it (calligraphy) was a craft that you could study and get good at and learn your tools,” she said,
“but that also it could be used for expression and that everything I did from day one combined some form of
painting or illumination with the words. And I always felt that the words without the illumination were
missing something but also the illumination without the words was missing something. And it was just being
able to marry that and to use it in a faithful way, which was really important to me.”
So she hung out her calligraphy shingle in Flagstaff and immediately found plenty of work. She eventually
returned to Michigan and set up shop as Acorn Arts in Howell.
When she first started her focus was mostly on the lettering. When she got into engrossing — painting,
gilding, fine filigree and things that don’t necessarily pertain to lettering — she was helped by two people —
Michael Sull of Mission, Kan., who taught her in a yearlong masters class; and Jed Gibbons, whose
background is graphic design but who taught her illumination.
The engrossing was the biggest challenge, she said, “because it encompasses a lot more forms. You have to
be good at gilding. You have to be good at painting. You have to be good at shadowing. There are so many
different things that factor into it.”
Eventually, with Sull’s help, she became the 14th person inducted in the International Association of Master
Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting’s Master Penman Society. She was one of only four
women on the 14-person group, first formed in 2001. It honors those who have achieved a distinguished level
of excellence in penmanship and the calligraphic arts, including business penmanship, ornamental and
Spencerian script, engrosser’s script, engrossing and illumination, offhand flourishing and text lettering.
“When I did that, “ she said, “you have to create your own certificate as proof of your work. Then it goes
before a board of master penmen to be approved by them. My certificate has four little cherubs in mine in the
shape of a cross.” She also used the first Christian alphabet formed, as decreed by Constantine.
When she was inducted she gave a talk about her certificate and explained why my faith mattered so much to
her and the significance of the different elements of her certificate.
That her art finds it beginnings in the scribes who wrote out the Torah and the monks who penned the first
written Bibles is not lost on Crittenden. In fact, she uses that to teach a little about the faith to every one of
her calligraphy students.
“Even if I am teaching secular groups, which I do, I still can talk about the history of it, talk about the Church
history of it, because that is where all of these skills were developed, so that they have an understanding,” she
said. “And there is all kinds of symbolism in the manuscripts that are lost on the audiences of today. So I
always make sure that I reference those so that when they are looking at manuscripts in the future they’ll
know what they are pertaining to.”
She expands on that even more when teaching in a more religious setting, which she and Gibbons have done
every fall for 10 years when they spend a week teaching novices and postulants a class called “The
Illuminated Prayer” at the Religious Sisters of Mercy motherhouse in Alma.
“What we have done is combine the lettering with the illumination you would have learned in the Middle
Ages,” she said. “What we do is the Our Father, or the Ave Maria, or something of that nature. But when we
are doing it we teach it as much as possible in a scriptorium setting, so they learn about the history of these
manuscripts and what a sacred art form this was and is and how meditative it can become, how prayerful it
can become. They learn about the pigments and grind their own pigments as they did in the Middle Ages. But
in a religious setting you are learning the history of your church, you are learning the history of how these
words were passed down and how we come to have them now.”
She taught one recent class to do this on a velum scroll. “And so it would have been as the Torahs were done,
as our initial lettering for the Gospels would have been done and passed down,” she said. “So they learn the
tradition and what the position of the scribe was, as most people were illiterate, and how to pass on the word
and why in the Middle Ages you would have such large books with illuminated pictures because people
couldn’t read and it would draw them into the story of whatever the lettering was about, so they could follow
along. So it is a big history of the Church that you learn but you also learn meditative skills and the sisters
found that very moving and very helpful, particularly for the young ones who come in, when they are novices
and postulants, to kind of close out the noise of the world and be able to find that inner quiet and settle down
and be very mindful and prayerful of what you are doing and devoting your attention to it.”
When she’s not teaching, she’s still learning and studying this art form. She’s made two trips to Italy to study
original texts.
“I am a complete nerd, a geek of the highest form,” she said, “because what I do is study ancient manuscripts.
How boring is that? I love it and I am drawn to it but for most people it would be as boring as heck. Oh my
God, I’m in Europe and I want to see another church? But to me that is where the art is and that is what I love
to do.”
Of course, not everything is faith-related. She recently was completing a certificate for the University of
Michigan. She also does custom invitations and creates pieces using prayers and prose. Such work, she said,
means creating lasting art on a deadline. And coping with it being less than perfect.
“For most things I am never satisfied,” she said. “I would always go back and change something if I had
more time. So finally you have to learn to balance to what is good and okay to present versus what is your
best work because you cannot do your best work every time. You just do the best you are able to do at that
moment, not necessarily the best you are capable of. But I am pretty demanding. I would never turn out
something that was not acceptable to me because it is my name out there. I have pretty high standards.”
While time and technology allow her to do things those Middle Ages monks could not do, it also created her
competition — the computer. But while a lot of similar work can be done on computers, she said, “there is a
big backlash going on because people have done that pretty much since the 1970s and people understand that
you have lost some of the beauty of the art form itself. So it is coming back into vogue.”
The White House, for instance, has a permanent staff of calligraphers. So does the city of Los Angeles.
“I am pretty lucky,” she said, “because I get to do it for a living. You can make a good living doing this. I
wish I had known that growing up, but I didn’t. I think some young people have a penchant or a desire to
become a calligrapher, they just love it and are drawn to it, but everybody says ‘no, it’s a hobby. Now go get
a job.’ I am here to tell them otherwise.”
Beyond teaching more, and learning more, and creating more, Crittenden is planning for the future.
“For my retirement,” she said, “I am working to build a catalog of work and after the initial is done then I
have, in my studio, four different printers and a tabloid scanner, some pretty high-quality equipment. So I
scan them and then I can control the outcome of the print. I even will gild the prints, so people can buy a fine
quality reproduction and I can control the quality going out there.”
Not that Crittenden, who has been doing this for 35 years, is going to retire any time soon. She said she plans
to create for as long as her eyesight holds out and her hands remain steady. “There are people in their 80s still
doing this.”
Besides, for her, calligraphy is an art form that keeps on giving, even centuries after the artist — known or
unknown — has died.
“It is my personal belief that the love and the prayer you put into them stays with them,” she said. “The spirit,
the energy you put into them stays with them for the viewer. So that it doesn’t stop giving, whether you here
or not here, the spirit keeps giving.”
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