~ by Rebecca Hazell
Betty Locke
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Born in Edmonton, Betty Locke loves art and people. Receiving a BEd, a BA in Fine Arts and a diploma in Early Childhood Education, she taught junior high school art, English, French and Social Studies! She annually inked in students' names on graduation diplomas, her first calligraphic works.
After marrying, Betty and her husband moved to Calgary and produced a family. In the 1970's they completed further degrees in Eugene, Oregon. Taking a short calligraphy class, Betty discovered "there were such things as 'stroke' and 'sequence', which would have been wonderful to know when slaving over those diplomas." A new interest was ignited, and she studied with a renowned calligraphy teacher, Fran Strom, for a year and joined a calligraphy guild.
Back in Calgary, Betty felt bereft without her calligraphy friends. Fran had encouraged her to teach, saying, "You'll know more than they do."
Despite a discouraging response from local institutions, she advertised through a community association and eighteen students came to her first of many classes. The City of Calgary, now interested, invited her to teach through its system, and her classes helped spawn a new calligraphy community.
Fifteen years ago, she and her husband abandoned Calgary winters. After visiting and loving this area, they settled in. Betty began teaching through the Cowichan Community Centre and helped found the local calligraphy guild. She's taught at international calligraphy conferences, too, though nowadays she and her husband prefer traveling for fun. She primarily teaches through the Elder College, because she loves working with mature students and feels free to teach her way, sharing all she knows and delighting in students' discoveries.
Betty sometimes accepts commissions, and here's one that repeats words and letters, challenging her to create variety. These three illustrations not only vary in style; the same words or letters differ, delighting the eye and honouring tradition without being slavish. Betty prefers to work in pen, but her pieces often contain flowers, illustration or flourishes done in flat brush. She often letters in colour rather than black, as colour and "hand" can help convey the meaning or emotion in a piece: for instance green and a playful "hand" can imply a meadow. And her work area, amazingly, is her kitchen island and a few drawers!
Her talent has been rewarded: in the yearly international contest sponsored by the Washington Calligraphers Guild and the National Association of Letter Carriers, for The Graceful Envelope, she has received Honourable Mention twice. She is also a Lifetime Member of three societies: the Edmonton Calligraphic Society, and the Bow Valley Calligraphy Guild in Calgary and Warmland Calligraphers of the Cowichan Valley (both of which she helped found). For information on joining Warmland Calligraphers, go to . Or join at a meeting, held every second Tuesday, except July and August, at Island Savings Centre in the Mesachie Room. And to find one of Betty's classes, look in the Elder College brochure.
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