Robert Palladino was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1932. His grandfather, an Italian stonemason and architect, had come to Santa Fe at the invitation of Archbishop Lamy, to build the Cathedral of St Francis. The youngest of eight children, Robert joined the Trappist monastic order in Pecos New Mexico in 1950, at the age of seventeen. When the conditions in that arid landscape proved too challenging for the groups’ farming needs, they moved, lock stock and barrel, to the lush valley of Lafayette, Oregon. Over the years, he studied with several calligraphy masters and became the monastery’s scribe – an extensive task in a silent order – and its choirmaster, leading Gregorian chant eight times daily. After eighteen years as a monk, when the decision was made to eliminate choral chant from the routine, he chose to leave the order, citing that it no longer felt like his spiritual home without the music.

When I met him, Robert Palladino was teaching calligraphy in the art department at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In a school where humanities was the central core of the curriculum, his classes embodied the humanist spirit, bringing students from all disciplines together in creative expression of the history of language. He became my mentor and quiet champion. In the 1980’s, a time when teaching styles were all about change, I would not have survived as a traditional, realist painter without his philosophical endorsement. I was swimming upstream, against the grain of my contemporary context, but I was not alone, thanks to his spiritual support. Our friendship continued until his death in 2016. He celebrated my vision with native grasses, and gladly gifted the calligraphy for my folio cover, which was painted lifesize, with a 2” sable flat brush.

There was another student at the college who had dropped out, fearful that his adoptive parents’ hard earned dollars were being wasted on the expensive tuition. He hung around campus to audit a class, however, as was the customary culture at Reed, and the class he was drawn to was calligraphy – the study of letterform. A few years later, he would begin to design computers, eventually naming them Apple. Those computers would go on to become not just the standard tool for graphic design, but a new tool for many of us in the visual arts as well. Little did I know that this technology would be my bridge to cross over from traditional drawing to hybrid digital, and then on to a fully digital creation, as you see in the grasses.

While Palladino never owned a computer, his teachings influenced the direction of this technology that now pervades our lives. In my career and lifetime, I have straddled both universes – and while I celebrate the vision that traditional drawing has given me, I would not be able to treat the grasses so thoroughly without these digital tools. At a time when I feel strongly that it is no longer all about me, the artist, the human, — this creative method allows me to step out of the picture completely, and put the viewer in my shoes of deep, direct, ecstatic seeing.

This title art, kindly donated by Father Robert, is the cover for my folio, Native Grasses of the Apache Highlands, which is now available to view in Special Collections at the Libraries of several universities.

Robert Palladino and the Calligraphy Heritage at Reed
Steve Jobs’ commencement speech
Gregorian Chants – the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos