Inga’s Story

Inga Dubay  is a multi-talented painter, calligrapher, teacher and author who was interested in letters from the very beginning. Even as a young child, one of her favorite books was the Speedball calligraphy book. Her parents were very supportive of Inga’s artistic interests, and at every Christmas and birthday she was given some type of gift having to do with painting or drawing. 

Born in Syracuse, New York, Inga grew up without a lot of relatives nearby. Her Norwegian father (who was a research chemist for Eastman Kodak) and her English mother (a piano instructor at Eastman School of Music) were the only ones of their families to emigrate to the United States. Being of Norwegian descent and having studied the language, Inga (after graduating from the University of Oregon) applied to study at Kunstakademiet, the art academy in Oslo, Norway, and was admitted as a foreign student. 

After returning to the United States to do graduate work at the University of Oregon, Inga met her husband, Joe, who was then teaching mathematics at the University. “When I first met him, he was doing watercolors–I was very attracted to a mathematician that did watercolors.” They were married in 1959 and moved to Berkeley, California, where Inga continued to do artwork. “However, I had three children. Our oldest son was born in 1960, and then in 1963 we had twins, which was unexpected. That was wonderful, but I didn’t get much artwork done.”

While living in Ashland in 1965, Inga received a letter from someone in Portland that changed her life. The sender “must have been studying with Lloyd Reynolds. I decided that I wanted to learn to write that way. I copied, more or less, every letter on the letter. And then I got a hold of Lloyd’s Italic Calligraphy and Handwriting and did what I could.”

After moving to Portland in 1968, Inga started taking classes at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts at the old location on 18th and NW Hoyt, which was close to her children’s school, The Metropolitan Learning Center. “I thought I’d study there just one term and learn Italic and that will be it. I started studying with Lois McClelland and, of course, I loved it. Then there was that Uncial alphabet up on the wall, and I wanted to learn Humanistic Bookhand, and Yvonne Bianco’s History of Alphabets class the next year, and …”

Besides continuing to study with Lois McClelland, Yvonne Blanco, Lloyd Reynolds, and a host of visiting instructors, Inga began to become involved in her sons’ experimental school, which had a strong emphasis on parental involvement, which Inga feels is a real key to a successful education. Whenever Lloyd gave a talk or a workshop, he always talked about the millions of children who are being crippled by bad handwriting. “I felt I really needed to do something about that.”

“I had met Barbara Getty at various workshops and, in about 1975, she said, ‘Would you be interested in doing a series of workbooks?’ Barbara was a classroom teacher in the Beaverton School District and had received her principal’s permission to teach italic in the third grade. She was busy doing work sheets and so was I, but neither of us really wanted to tackle the project alone. I said sure, let’s do the series. Barbara did kindergarten, first, and second, I did third, fourth, and fifth, and we did the sixth-grade book together. In 1980, Portland State University Continuing Education Press published the series. Collaborating with Barbara Getty has been a wonderful experience–accomplishing tasks neither one of us would have done alone.”

Inga and Barbara later wrote Write Now: The Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success, Italic Letters: Calligraphy and Handwriting, and the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series. Together they have presented over 170 handwriting seminars for medical professionals and numerous workshops for the public. Inga also is the author of Getty-Dubay Italic Calligraphy: for School & Home.

Inga began teaching calligraphy and handwriting at the Metropolitan Learning Center and continued teaching handwriting in public and private schools for many years. She was an adjunct professor at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, where she taught calligraphy for twenty-five years and was Book Arts Department head for six years. Inga has been a faculty member at several International Calligraphy Conferences and an exhibiting artist at many invitational and juried exhibitions.

Bio compiled from the Winter 1991 newsletter issue and the PSC 50th anniversary publication.