A reference today by a British quilt maker, Margaret Cooter (in her tremendously informative blog, to be found at http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.com/) sent me looking for the work of Dutch textile artist Marian Bijlunga (website here), who has done amazing work with horsehair and fish scales and fine cotton thread.  But what interested me was her work with seed pods and grasses, to create collages which look like beautiful but entirely unreadable script.   I found the following images of some of her work on her  flickr site through the link here.   All images are her copyright.

In an interview published in FibreArts Magazine in 2003 (the link is here) Marian Biljenga said

"I see my work as drawing," says Bijlenga. "I like patterns, and when you work with lines and dots, you see lines and dots everywhere." While her early work often alluded to alphabets and calligraphy, she now takes her inspiration from nature: white fungal dots on tree trunks, the curve of eucalyptus leaves, swirling water eddies. She also recently completed a series of portraits, a departure from her usual abstractions.




Biljenga's calligraphic work is very compelling.  It exploits the pattern of elegant script through the not-quite-regular patterns of natural forms, arranged in a way which tricks the eye into thinking it is seeing script, because of the regularity of the patterning - and our awareness of many types of writing from different languages and cultures around the world.  Presenting her collages rather like calligraphy, with margins and lines and borders, adds to this illusion.  


Her work fits very closely with my own thinking about my current Pathway Project on writing - where I have been working away from legible, accessible, meaningful text, towards the shapes and patterns which suggest - but do not ctually represent - meaningful handwriting.