f artists travel many roads to find their muse, then Glen could fill an atlas with his meanderings.” So wrote Anne Binder in the 2002 spring issue of the Letter Arts Review, considered the quarterly magazine of cutting-edge calligraphy and lettering arts. The fact that Glen’s work and words have been included in Letter Arts Review since 1991, including eight “best of” annuals, places him among the best of contemporary calligraphers working today. So, lets review the “meanderings” of, as Binder further noted, “…one of the most quirky and original calligraphic artists working today.”

Glen Miller Epstein was born in Los Angeles. While at Hamilton High School, Glen caught the acting bug and enrolled at Santa Monica City College (SMCC) as a Theatre major. Like millions of others, James Dean was a profound influence; while still in high school, Glen had worked with many little theatre companies. He also began writing poetry. His latent -- almost blatant -- commitment to excel at whatever the moment called for is certified. Some "moments" stretched into years.

At SMCC, he not only won a best actor award but also wrote several plays that were showcased there, and other theatres. He also won a best director award for "The Sandbox," by Edward Albee. A member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), he appeared in dozens of TV shows. Further, as a member of the Screen Extras Guild, he has been an extra in over 100 motion pictures.

is meanderings continued, including time at the Los Angeles City College and another at UCLA where he took an English class with his mother – both received “A’s”. Glen's focus narrowed to poetry and, on the side, collecting old books, which he devoured like candy. The reading, however, gave way to the books themselves. He became addicted to the vehicle rather than the ride. It was a twilight-zone transition; he said, "I was able to handle and smell and see type in an 1821 book printed in London and realize that John Keats may have been writing a few blocks away." This probability aroused the mystery of the book itself: bookbinding, paper, type (and type design) and more significantly, the history of book arts including calligraphy.

Glen had been diddling with "fancy writing" for years before he transferred to California State College, now as an English major, where fate -- he uses the word often -- brought him to Henri Coulette and his California circle of University of Iowa Writers' Workshop colleagues teaching in California: Phil Levine, Peter Everwine, Bob Mesey and frequent visitors like John Berryman. Glen's poetry matured; he won the Cal State Statement Poetry Award two years in a row, and graduated a Dean's List Honor student. With Coulette and Levine's sponsorship and connections, Glen was awarded a two-year Graduate Fellowship to the Writer's Workshop, which was then and remains the most famous cradle of the best writers of the late twentieth century: Margaret Mitchell, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Kurt Vonnegut, John Irvine, William Styron, Robert Lowell, John Berryman -- the names could fill a few pages. Glen's first teachers were Donald Justice, Marvin Bell, Mark Strand and the man who redirected his life, Harry Duncan of the distinguished Cummington Press. In the '60s, graduate students were required to take a minor. Glen's choice was predestined: typography.

What impressed Duncan more than Glen's knowledge of the book, (he printed seven in two years,) was his calligraphy, which had taken a mature turn six years earlier upon discovering Oscar Ogg's Three Classics of Italian Calligraphy and E. M. Thompson's Greek and Latin Paleography. Two years under this gentle mentor and master of craft, Glen embraced Harry's advice that he would better service himself and the future by writing things beautifully rather than writing beautiful things.

or fifteen years during the late '60s and the '70s, Glen studied and practiced calligraphy eight plus hours a day. When Epstein's Bookstore (with his brother Harry, 1968-1978) paid the bills, it was eight plus hours practicing a night. During the '70s, it was study and practice; moonwriting (see posters); a three-year marriage producing his daughter, Sara; discovering Arthur Baker; overall, it was a busy decade. From 1977 to 1980, Glen returned to Los Angeles to nurse is father, who died of cancer in 1981.

Being the only calligrapher around, Glen produced tens of thousands of names on University of Iowa (UI) certificates, over 300 posters for his bookstore readings and hundreds more for the Writer's Workshop and International Writing Program -- today numbering well over 1000. His variety of applied work for Iowa City and the UI produced one of the most unique pieces of calligraphy done on Earth. A letterhead for James Van Allen, director of the Astronomy Department for Galileo is now inside the planet Jupiter. Although many universities and institutions provided parts for spacecraft, Glen's logo was adopted to go along for the ride. It is inside the spacecraft and though dozens of documentaries have been made, it wasn't until some ten years later that the inside was fully perused on camera and Glen saw his "Galileo." He said he smiled.

The '80s were to take Glen slowly out of Iowa, his name and work seeping toward the core of the greater calligraphic community. In 1983, founder and director of the UI Center for the Book, Kim Merker, invited Glen to become a charter Faculty member and secured his first classes teaching calligraphy thru the School of Art and Art History (SAAH). Director Wallace Tomasini, for the sake of a "Center for the Book," allowed it under the conditions that the course was offered as a Saturday and evening course. The class soon became so popular that within a year two beginning sections were offered along with an advanced class. In 1985, Guided Correspondence (part of Continuing Education) asked Glen if he would write a course book and teach a correspondence class. The course book took two years to complete, with the SAAH offering it on a trial basis. The book was selected by Continuing Education to be entered in the National University and College Educational Association (NUCEA) competition. The course book was a national award winner. When Glen asked the SAAH if Calligraphy 2 could be added, the "yes" was immediate but the course book took an additional two years. The Guided Correspondence courses became the most popular of the 210 offered. At times, enrollment reached over 400.

is regional one person exhibitions included The Muscatine Museum of Art, Haunted Bookstore, (Iowa City), The Quad Cities Art Gallery, (Moline, IL), The Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce, the South Amana Granary emporium, (Iowa), Iowa State Bank & Trust, (Iowa City), Project Art, (University of Iowa hospitals and Clinics, twice), Barns & Noble, (Iowa City.)

Beginning in the early eighties to the present, Glen taught workshops in every major calligraphy guild and society in the United States, including eight International Calligraphy and Lettering Conferences (49 to date). He has exhibited in over 100 juried and invitational shows internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty, Smithsonian, (including their seven year “Graceful Envelope” traveling exhibition), the Chicago Institute of Art, the Newberry and Peace Museum, (Chicago), the Los Angeles County Museum, the Frye (Seattle), The Brand (Los Angeles), and museums throughout Europe, Asia, Australia South America, and recently Kathmandu, Nepal. In 1990, his work was purchased by the Harrison Collection of Calligraphy, Special Collections, San Francisco, the most noted collection of its kind in the world. In 2004, his work was selected for permanent collection in “Sammlung Kaligraphie Berliner” ad der Akademie dur Kunste in Berlin, the first wing of a European Academy of Fine Arts built exclusively for modern calligraphy. Glen has received 24 Best of Shows and over 100 Juror’s Awards. In Australia, 2003, their first calligraphy Conference, he received a special “Professional Excellence Award for Mail Art.”

rom 1980 to the present, his publications, both calligraphy and writings (articles, essays by and about) number in the hundreds including, “The Art and Craft of Hand Lettering,” Annie Cicale, Lark Books, Sterling Pubs, NY; “The Speedball Textbook,” Joanne Fine, Hunt Pub, NC; Lettering Arts,” Joanne Fink, ed. PCI International, NY; “Belle Lettere,” Cittadella Pub, Italy; “A Chronology of Lettering Arts,” Paul Shaw, NY; “Writing Beyond Words,” Jerry Kelly, The Stinehour Press, NY; “The Artful Book of Days,” the Society of Calligraphy, Los Angeles; “The Calligraphers Engagement Calendar,” Eleanor Winters, Carole Maurer, eds., Universe Pub, NY; The Letter Arts Review, (see The Calligraphy Review,) John Neal Pub. Greensboro, NC (including creating the running series: “From Scribbler to Scribe”), Somerset Magazine, Los Angeles; Tractor: Iowa Arts and Culture, Legion Arts, Ia; Tabellae Ansatae (formerly Bound and Lettered), John Neal Pub, NC; and nearly every Calligraphy guild and society newsletter and publication in the US. Glen’s 1992 “Calendar of Country Knowledge and Extraordinary Americana” was voted Most Humorous by the National Calendar Association.

In the fall of 2008, Glen was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He passed away shortly thereafter—on Oct. 20 at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, Iowa—with his daughter, Sara Moninger, by his side. His sense of humor, appreciation for music, love of literature, and eye for beauty will endure in Sara and her two daughters, Erin and Lillian.