Woman of letters Stillwater artist’s wor-perfect style gains national exposure

On a recent afternoon in her Stillwater studio, Nancy Leavitt stood at her workbench, took a deep breath and exhaled on the proclamation in front of her. As her breath moistened a patch of glue that she painted on earlier, Leavitt picked up a thin sheet of gold, laid it on the document and rubbed until the metal stuck. With a clean, dry paintbrush, she whisked away the extra gold, revealing the shape of a stylized leaf that jumped out from the green foliage behind it.

The document needed to be finished by the next morning, and Leavitt still had a lot to do. Working on a tight deadline by her usual standards, the calligrapher and artist had nearly finished painting the tree that would serve as the backdrop for 300 signatures. She already had adorned the paper, handmade by Bernie Vinzani and Katie MacGregor of Whiting, with impeccably drawn text. But she needed to finish the gold leaves, 51 in all, to symbolize each state and the District of Columbia. Early the next day, the proclamation would be taken to Washington to be presented at a ceremony marking the inception of the National Register of Historic Trees.

“I don’t have a lot of call for gold, but this project really warrants it, I think,” Leavitt said during a short break from her work. “The National Register of Historic Trees sounds like a good idea to me. My husband and I were married under a tree.”

That affinity for nature was one of the reasons Leavitt was selected to design the proclamation. Her national reputation as a top-notch calligrapher and book artist didn’t hurt, either.

“I wanted something that would be a living document, something that would reflect the aesthetic sense of today but that had historic weight to it,” said Mike Venema of Ellsworth, a Los Angeles native who does public relations work for American Forests, the group behind the tree register. “We wanted the very finest document we could find.”

So he called a friend in L.A. for suggestions. The friend told him to try New York City. No luck there. Then, out of the blue, someone called him with a tip: The best women for the job, Jan Owen and Nancy Leavitt, both lived in a place called Bangor, Maine. Had he heard of it?

“They are the best at what they do in the whole country,” Venema said.

In the end, Venema chose Leavitt because her work fit the style that American Forests was looking for.

“The project I wanted had more of a classic feel,” Venema said.

The finished document, gold leaves and all, was scheduled to be unveiled at a ceremony last week at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s homestead in Virginia. Because of the recent tragedies at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and in Pennsylvania, American Forests has rescheduled the event for next spring. If all goes as planned, and President Bush approves the measure, the group will establish a register similar to the National Register of Historic Places to mark trees that have been “witnesses to history,” such as the tulip poplars and holly trees that Washington planted at Mount Vernon. The proclamation is expected to be signed by 300 dignitaries and supporters, including Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Martha Stewart.

“We decided early on that we needed to create a document to be signed by all attendees at the Mount Vernon event,” Venema said. “Leavitt just jumped in and created a wonderful, wonderful document for us.”

And she created it in five weeks, from concept to finished product. She usually spends a whole month painting and lettering.

“The time constraint makes a lot of difference when you’re doing this kind of work,” Leavitt said.

Looking at the proclamation, it seems like it took her much longer to make. Every letter is perfectly curved, slanted and aligned. The tree looks free form, yet controlled, with subtle shades of green mingling with gold and brown.

The 47-year-old artist has worked in calligraphy since 1979. She has completed more than 50 contemporary illuminated manuscript books, including “Stoney Psalms,” which was named “Best of the Best” in last year’s Guild of Book Workers juried exhibition. She knows what she’s doing, and it shows.

“It’s taken me a long time to get to this spot,” Leavitt said. “I feel really fortunate that I found something like this that I like to do.”

The Houlton native didn’t start out with aspirations of becoming a renowned calligrapher and artist. She wanted to be a pharmacist, so she took an apprenticeship with a local apothecary who painstakingly wrote all of his records and prescription labels by hand. Under his tutelage, she learned as much about lettering as she did about filling prescriptions. Leavitt went on to the University of Maine and earned a degree in biology, but she didn’t pursue pharmacy as she had planned.

“I really like science, but I realized what I wanted to do is be a landscape painter,” she said.

After graduation, she started to teach herself how to paint, then took a series of classes. She went to England for a summer to study calligraphy, and then came back and continued her education in lettering and bookbinding. In 1986, she earned an art degree at UM as well.

Her background in lettering and landscape painting has served her well. She designs greeting cards for Marcel Schurmann, posters for musical groups, and banners, including those used in St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor for its celebration of the Jubilee year in 2000. She also makes collages that bring to mind author and artist Nick Bantock’s “Griffin and Sabine” pieces, but her true love is bookmaking, which combines all of her favorite things.

“I spend my life looking at beautiful books, beautiful binding, beautiful paper, and I thought Nancy’s books were right up there with the very best,” said Priscilla Juvelis, a rare book dealer based in Cambridge, Mass. “Other people do nice lettering, but her books are such a combination of beautiful images and words … and Nancy’s one of the best colorists whose work I’ve ever seen.”

Leavitt’s color sense makes its way into every aspect of her life. When she gives directions to her house, she says, “It’s pink. You can’t miss it.” And you can’t. Her garden spreads out like a Monet canvas next to the house she shares with her husband, David Yarborough. Her studio is neat and orderly, but not sterile – brilliant swatches of cloth peek out from her workbench, and rainbow-hued stacks of handmade paper fill her shelves. When asked to demonstrate her lettering process, her first question is, “What color do you want me to use?”

Sitting at a sunlit desk overlooking her garden, Leavitt makes calligraphy look easy. She dips a narrow pen nib into a pool of green gouache paint and writes a name in built-up Roman characters. Halfway through the third letter, she dips the pen into a cup of gold paint and continues drawing. The colors blend together in a streak of olive. She dots the “i” and crosses the “t” quickly and perfectly, before adding a flourish of red at the end.

“Really, calligraphy is drawing,” Leavitt explains as she works. “I am drawing these letters.”

Drawing the letters requires not only a steady hand, but an eye for detail. Even though the paper she uses is so good that she can scrape the paint off it if she needs to, she really can’t make mistakes. She doesn’t work at night, because if she’s tired, there’s more room for error. She needs to take frequent breaks because the meticulous lettering is hard on the hand muscles. And working on a deadline, there’s not much break time.

On the day before the proclamation was due, Leavitt wasn’t worried, even though she only had a few hours of work time left. This is what she does for a living, after all. Even though the document would be signed by dignitaries and celebrities, it was just another job – more public than most of her work, but essentially, just another job. And she doesn’t need to fret about the biggest detail for a while.

“I was very honored to be asked to do it, but I’ll be really nervous when George W. Bush signs it and I have to write under his name “president of the United States,” Leavitt said, smiling. “That’s when you really can’t make a mistake.”