Persian calligrapher renders love, beauty, history
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By now, Lauren Ober has pretty much seen — or, more accurately, heard — it all.
As host of “The Big Listen,” from American University’s WAMU and NPR, Ms. Ober guides podcast enthusiasts of many stripes through a weekly podcast about, well, podcasts.
“I am constantly surprised by how creative people are, in the majority of podcasts,” said Ms. Ober, who grew up in Mt. Lebanon and attended WinchesterThurston School. A longtime journalist in print, then public radio, Ms. Ober brings an ear for detail and an appreciation for the unusual to her job.
“The Big Listen” has introduced America to the quirks of “Betty in the Sky With a Suitcase!” where a flight attendant for a major airline spills stories of high-altitude bad behavior and unsavory passengers as well as good-natured human interest.
There’s also “BeefWatch,” a podcast companion to a University of Nebraska-Lincoln newsletter. With episode subjects such as “Cattle Lice” and “Getting the Most Out of Oat Pasture,” it is designed for farmers and ranchers to listen as they work.
Yet the runaway podcast champ, at least judging by iTunes charts, is the true crime genre. That’s hardly surprising, given the video success of documentaries such as HBO’s “The Jinx” and Netflix’s “Making a Murderer.” Podcasts have been Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Majid Roohafza says his calligraphy represents more than art. It is a way to illustrate thousands of years of Persian history, literature and culture.
“Rendition of Love,” an exhibition of his work, will open Friday and run through July 2 at First Unitarian Church’s Undercroft Gallery in Shadyside. A public reception for the exhibition will be held from 7-9 pm. Friday, and Mr. Roohafza will lecture and conduct a workshop from 9:30-11 a.m. June 17 at the gallery. All events are free.
At the age of 9, Mr. Roohafza began studying calligraphy as part of his school’s curriculum in Birjand, Iran. In ninth grade, when most students stop taking calligraphy lessons, he found a way to keep learning at a special school.
“My art teacher recognized that I’m doing a little better than normal, around for at least a decade, but it wasn’t until 2014’s “Serial” that a weekly Peabody award-winning show became such a worldwide phenomenon.
“Serial” is produced by WBEZ Chicago and was created by those involved in “This American Life.”
According to a report in AdAge, more than 57 percent of Americans sampled podcasts last year, about 23 percent higher than in 2015. It’s difficult to pinpoint what will be a hit, although the best so far have involved journalists skilled in audio storytelling.
Allison Gremba is a graduate student in the University of Pittsburgh’s department of anthropology. Last summer, she taught the course “Crime in the Media” for the school’s Osher Lifelong Learning program.
True crime in any sort of media, she said, hooks the consumer “with an adrenalin rush. They like fear, a real type of fear.”
Season one of “Serial” had an unlikely and I’m more passionate about it. He suggested, ‘Why don’t you come to that [school]?’ And then I started that, just basically parallel with my school, which was a great and incredible journey.”
Much more than just artful handwriting, Persian calligraphy is a rich blend of Persian culture, poetry and history, Mr. Roohafza said.
“It’s basically an extraction of all the beauty — the written literature, the music, the dance and, of course, the poetry,” he said. “For calligraphy, you ultimately have a chance to write something, and most of those are pieces and verses of famous poets.”
Mr. Roohafza, a 39-year-old chemical engineer, said the discipline appealed to many aspects of his personality.
“The practice of calligraphy, the nature of it, is basically like meditation,” he said. “It’s very exquisite, very detail-oriented. It has to
subject: a decadesold case of a high school student convicted of killing his girlfriend in Baltimore. Each week, host Sarah Koenig and her team followed threads in real time and, once the podcast was rolling, fielded clues from fans on sites such as Reddit.
As a result of new details from the case, Adnan Syed, the alleged perpetrator, has since been granted a new trial.
“I can’t answer why true crime in any medium is popular, but you think back to Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood,’” Ms. Ober said, adding that the “passion and rage, madness and brilliance” of the genre is a crowd pleaser.
“[But] the danger of true crime podcasts is when people are telling these crime stories solely for the sake of entertainment, because deal with geometry, with balance, with concentration.”
He began with Nasta’liq, a rigid line that he said is the most common type of Persian calligraphic script. After graduating from high school, he moved to Tehran to attend the Iranian Association of Calligraphers. While in engineering school there, he met Gholam Hossein Amirkhani. The master calligrapher taught him how to write in cursive Nasta’liq, which allows more flexibility for expression.
“You’re facing an endless world of imagination and creativity that you can play with and basically go and find your own way, your own style of art,” he said.
To Mr. Roohafza, each type of line has its own beauty, movement and dance. Both Nasta’liq and cursive Nasta’liq can be expressed through different media. Historically, Persian calligraphers used brown ink made from the skin of fresh walnuts and black ink from ashes. Lines were made with a piece of bamboo.
Mr. Roohafza said some works in the exhibition were made using traditional materials. Others were drawn on a computer. Ali Masalehdan, the chair of Undercroft Gallery’s art committee, said Mr. Roohafza’s mixing of different media is part of what drew him to his work.
“It combines traditional calligraphy with modern concepts, and the result is something beautiful,