Note: This is the first interview in my series called “Documenting Love".
At first glance, with his black rimmed glasses and shy smile, Camilo seems like an introvert person. However, over the course of talking to him about calligraphy, he opened up and I realized how passionately he felt towards it. Chatting in the warm nook of Acoustic Java on a cold evening, I also learned that he avidly loves Hamilton, the musical, and is an equally compassionate person double majoring in Psychology, Sociology and a minor in Education and wants to open up a school in Panama in the future.
Please don’t forget to follow him (@capitalics) on Instagram!
Sonam Dechen Gurung: Hi Camilo!
Camilo Posada: Hi Sonam!
SDG: First, let’s start with introduction. Umm… What would you like to tell about yourself?
CP: (laughs) My name is Camilo Posada. I was born in Colombia in 1996 and then I moved to Panama in 1999. I’ve been all my life in Panama with my parents and my older brother. And yea…that’s basically my life. And then I moved to Clark University, to Worcester last year.
SDG: What made you come to Clark?
CP: I’ve always wanted to study psychology, and I think that Clark has a really good psychology program. So I applied to this school and they gave me a really good scholarship so I decided to come here.
SDG: And how are you adapting yourself to Clark? How do you find it?
CP: I think I really like it. I feel that people are really nice here and… I like it. I don’t like the cold, it’s too cold for me but it’s fine.
SDG: Since this interview series is on interests and passion and love I want you to introduce us to your passion, hobby, whatever you call it. What do you call it?
CP: Okay, I will say it’s my hobby slash kind-of-passion. I don’t know if it’s my passion passion but I really like it and its calligraphy. I love to do it and it relaxes me a lot and I just like it a lot.
SDG: How did you start this?
CP: When I was in my junior year in high school, our professor asked us to do a mural about a poet and one of their poems. And I had to… there was a decision between printing a lot of pages and putting them together to make the poem big or writing it down. So I decided to write it down so what I did is that I looked in Google for a font that I liked and I copied it for nine hours.
SDG: Wow.
CP: So it was nine long hours of copying and erasing and copying and putting in the markers. It was super long but at the end of the nine hours I knew the letter by heart so I could do it anywhere, anytime without seeing the computer. I started like that. Like I did all the posters in my high school that you can imagine. Everyone wanted me to do that font, but then I decided to… I thought I was good at it (laughs) so I decided to explore new fonts. A friend of mine asked me to paint, like do five quotes on her bedroom wall, and she sent me the quotes and the font she wanted. So I just copied it for like five days. I was like a whole week in her house doing that and then I started to learn new and new fonts and then yea…
SDG: So when you did that, was it in a stencil way? Or did you write it directly on the wall?
CP: Directly on the wall. I did it first with pencil, and then I used paint.
SDG: So, modern day fresco?
CP: Yeah (laughs). Basically, if you wanna use artistic terms yea that’s basically it. And then I started buying calligraphy stuff and brush, pen, markers. Because most of what I did was … I think it’s called faux-calligraphy. Which is like false calligraphy, so it’s basically that you do everything in pencil and then you fill it out. But real calligraphy is when you don’t feel it out. You just do it with a marker and then you apply pressure and then you apply less pressure. And I started learning that actually last year. So I practice a lot with pressure and stuff and using markers and using calligraphy pens and I think I’ve learned a lot and come a long way since last year.
SDG: That’s always good to know. I mean you also started your Instagram page this summer, right?
CP: Oh yea, exactly.
SDG: Is that because you learned more and was more confident to start something or...?
CP: Yes, I started the calligraphy page like a month before starting school here this year. And it was because I bought these new pens and all these new stuff and I sent one of best friends a picture of everything I did, just because she likes everything I do and I know she wouldn’t say that its ugly and so she told me that everything was beautiful. So I sent her a lot of stuff and she told me “I know a lot of people do calligraphy, like Instagram calligraphy pages. You should do the same thing and maybe you can get money or maybe you can get famous by doing that and I know you like it.” So I was like “Yea, might as well do it.” And with her, with my best friend, I designed like the layout of the page an everything because it is not just like random things. It follows like an aesthetic. (laughs) It was because… mostly because I started to learn new fonts, so it would be more entertaining on Instagram page and because my friend pushed me to do it.
SDG: That’s good, so by more fonts what do you mean?
CP: Normally what I did was like italics if you think about (Microsoft) Word. If you think about Word documents and you think about italics, that’s mostly what I did and then I started following more accounts on Instagram about calligraphy and then I started copying them. It was not only… it was not just italics anymore, it was more like fun, modern, more bubbly or more going up instead of slants.
SDG: What does it mean to you? This calligraphy. Is there anything more on a personal level? Or is it just?
CP: Well, I feel that, I feel that. Ok, so when I was little I felt that I really wanted to find a passion. And you know how they say that “You should find something to do that you love even if they don’t pay you or if you find something that you love and they pay you, it’s like the ultimate goal.” So I was always looking to find that thing. And I feel that doing calligraphy is so relaxing and so I think it’s a beautiful art, a really lost art right now because of computers and technology. Not that I’m complaining but computers and technology are taking over and this is so unique I feel. Especially in Panama where I’m from, nobody does this because in the US it’s more like, “Oh, we want wedding invitations let’s get a calligrapher.” But in Panama you would never think of that. So I wanted to bring back, bring that art back and it’s so relaxing and so peaceful for me. If I’m extremely stressed, I will just write and it relaxes me.
SDG: When you’re, like you said, stressed and you try to relax, and you immerse into calligraphy do you have a specific content that you incorporate or is more spontaneous?
CP: It depends on the emotion of the day. (laughs) If I’m feeling stressed, or if I’m feeling sad maybe I’ll do sad quotes or sad words or if I’m feeling happy I’ll do like lyrics from a happy song or … I’ve done a lot of musical quotes, from musicals because I’ve really been into musicals. I don’t know if that’s weird. Calligraphy is also weird so maybe I’m just weird in general. (laughs) But yea, it depends mostly on the day but I try to combine doing only one word or doing long quotes like more than five words. I try to combine that because calligraphy is also not about only pressure and stuff, but also about spacing. If you space the letter different from one word to another you can tell so like if you do a quote you learn more about all these little details that people don’t normally think about. And I feel that practicing long sentences is better to reach like a consistent calligraphy.
SDG: You mentioned a lot about quotes, any specific quotes that you really liked after exploring calligraphy?
CP: Ummm… I really like to write the work “minimum.”
SDG: “Minimum”?
CP: Yea because if you learn how to do that word and it looks consistent, you know calligraphy. Because it’s so repetitive, the “m,” the “I,” then the “n.” It’s so repetitive all the movements that if you can differentiate that it says “minimum,” then you’re good at calligraphy. I do that a lot and I do a lot of “Hamilton” quotes because I am just obsessed.
(Both laughs)
SDG: How does you hobby slash passion help you in college? Does it help at all? If it does then how?
CP: I feel that it helps because of the fact that it’s super relaxing, and college is so stressful. Not only school but you start to think about friends and you start to think about whats gonna happen next and just doing calligraphy is so relaxing that you feel like its like a little break from reality.
SDG: Cause you are so focused on that?
CP: You’re so focused on getting it right and you practice so much that you get out of … you stay out of all the situation and don’t think about your problems or about schoolwork and you think about just doing it right.
SDG: Your own form of meditation?
CP: Yea! Actually I talked to my friend past week about… She told me that she was gonna start meditation and I told her, “My meditation is calligraphy.” (laughs) I go to another place doing calligraphy.
SDG: I think, this might be kind of repetitive but, do you possibly want to capitalize on “@capitalics,” your Instagram page?
CP: I would love to get money out of @capitalics but, I don’t need it. That’s not my goal. If I get money… I’ve actually done work that paid me money.
SDG: Really!?
CP: Yes, Camila and Nicoletta (Camilo’s friends in Clark University), they told me to do some work and I did it and they paid me. It was super exciting. It’s like your hobby is paying off, and all the calligraphy pens are so expensive. You have to think about paper, so expensive and its not easiest hobby in the world. It’s not something you can use for years, it runs out the more you practice. It felt really good to get paid for something that you liked and I loved to see their faces when I gave them their things cause they really liked it. I feel like that. Maybe they are lying. (laughs) But yea, if I get money that would be awesome and if I don’t, it still relaxes me and it’s still something I will continue to do.
SDG: That’s nice to know!
CP: Another thing that influenced me to do @capitalics, it was… when I was in fifth grade, I had a literature professor, she told me that my handwriting looked like a font that you could use in Word. She told me that it was so perfectly spaced that it actually could be put in Word and that it would look fine in fifth grade. I was super excited because of that, so I started to change my handwriting every day. My notebooks, you would think that ten different people wrote them. My professor always told, “You’re gonna do something with calligraphy.”
SDG: That’s like more than ten years back.
CP: My school is super small. That was the same professor that gave me the task during my high school.
SDG: Wow! (mindblown)
CP: When I told her that I was gonna work with my hand, she was super excited because she remembered that moment and she told me to go for it and in the middle of the year she left the school. Last month, I posted a picture on my Facebook saying “Look at my calligraphy page.” And she commented that it was one of the most exciting things that she had read that day because it shows that something you can say to a fifth-grader actually can impact them to become that.
SDG: Wow.
CP: It comes with an educational message.
(Both laugh)
(The Chainsmokers liked one of Camilo's work! He said that made him "turn red". Photosource: @Capitalics)
