Chris Paschke, an accomplished fine artist and calligraphic designer in Tehachapi, is gearing up to teach calligraphy classes at Tehachapi Art Center. Owner of Design Ink, a custom framing and staging consultant, Paschke has also been an author, columnist, educator and framing expert for over 20 years. 
"Art has been my passion since I was old enough to color," she says, adding "I have spent my entire life drawing, sketching, painting, lettering, and framing.
Her fascination for calligraphy and pen-written letterforms, a lifelong study, began in college. First intrigued by the precision and structure of historic illuminated alphabets, Paschke says her work was “set free” when she studied with various European masters from Germany, Austria, and Russia, who encouraged abstraction and personal interpretation. She has also studied Asian calligraphy with masters in both China and the United States. 
Chris has been to China five times in her pursuit of continuing her own education, and her original calligraphic abstractions, tiles and Asian interpretations are contemporary collages of color and texture.
More recently, Chris has pursued study in traditional Japanese sumi-e, Chinese painting techniques and calligraphy. This type of minimalism is seen in her softer grasses, florals, and decorative collages.
As a calligraphic artist fluid in both Western alphabets and Asian scripts, Chris has developed her own unique style of fine art using those skills in images that “use the written word as subject matter.” Her work is in private collections and galleries, and some has been licensed for prints that have been sold at such disparate venues as juried shows to department stores.
You can see more examples of Paschke’s work, and read more about her experiences and skills, at www.designinkart.com