At 91 – Klara Calitri – A Visual Memoir

Klara Calitri is a VT based Austrian multi-media artist.   A true renaissance woman, at 91, Klara speaks several languages and employs many art forms.

I recently sat down with Klara in her studio for an interview.  She described snapshots of her life, a succession of events that has lead her to Vermont and what she sees as a natural evolution in her life as an artist.

She began, “What you saw as a child and liked stays with you for the rest of your life.”  The refinement and sensibility evident in her work thus remains forever linked with Austria.

Born in Vienna in 1922, Calitri still draws inspiration from her Viennese background and childhood experiences:   As a teenager sent to study languages in the Moravian Highlands of Czechoslovakia.   Fleeing Nazi occupation in 1939 on a midnight train to Switzerland, Her family immigrated to New York City.  While on Scholarship to St. Michael’s University in Burlington, meeting her future husband Junius that summer at Orchard Beach – he was an Olympic swimmer, and lifeguard champion who taught her how to win a swimming medal.  Post World War II – While attending Cornell University, where she earned her Master’s Degree, She describes bi-monthly trips back to NYC.  In their beat up 34 Chevy, gas rations saved up, her Canary in the back of the car.  The car leaked when it rained – they had to cover the canary with a tarp.

Then came a life filled with children, teaching, and the layering of many art forms and experimentation into multi-media.

Drawing from her love of Asian art and the memories of fine European porcelain, she has created a number of works with these delicate elemental qualities.  However, Calitri is no one trick pony; letting the medium determine where she goes with it.  She describes her love of mixing it up and mastering new techniques:”  “Each work of art dictates its own life.”  On painting, “The story comes out of the brush, you have to let it come through, listen to the painting forming itself.  On delving into porcelain, “Such an intimate detailed process.”  She mentions Picasso mixing ceramics with his paintings, “Many of the great artists who had any kind of brain were multi-disciplined, otherwise, you get bored.”  On her love of variety, “My use of multi media is an extension of my personality:  My loves, likes, even dislikes, and most significantly, my deep involvement with and reaction to nature.”

This leads us to her discovery of the monotype process and resulting works.  Calitri’s monotype prints on paper offer a uniquely pre-modern glimpse vis-à-vis modern landscape.

When creating the Allegories series, Calitri deftly employed a process of richly layered printmaking she learned under the tutelage of renowned printmaker Sarah Amos.  In this environmentally friendly method, natural substances such as oils and techniques such as gravure scaring are employed to avoid the use of toxic chemicals in the printmaking process.  Each print is created by hand on a large etching press.  Successive layers of patterned image are laid down while the surface is still wet.  Within the complex formation of these patterns, a new language emerges in which Calitri reveals her life story.

“My abstracts are sculptural, palpable works,” Calitri states.  In “Voyage” and “Blue Voyage,” Gravure scarring creates a topographical vision of Lake Champlain, enveloping the viewer with patterns and trails that guide into the past and future of her imagination.

Calitri lets color lead this process, In “Three Reds, Red Mosaic, Shadows and Lost Letters” Calitri establishes a mood by using her affinity for the energizing dynamics of red and grounding with nuances in black to generate portals of memoir.  “Light and City” and “Waterfall” uses structural squares and tones of cooling blue, moving the viewer across a subtle dreamscape.

Calitri adds, “Monoprints are very freeing because you have to do it quickly.  You have to let everything through, listen to the story forming itself.  “Tree of Life” and “Woman” echo experimental mantles ala Rorschach, floating pools of black and white.  Through contrasting pale and warm tones in “Mesa Verde” and “Glow,” Calitri hints at a journey to the temporal Southwest.  She emphasizes, “Abstracts are so freeing, I have an idea that generates the image, but the ensuing art piece becomes many things, depending on each individual’s perspective.”  “A doorway opens wide for interpretation and feeling, connecting to us in a core universal language – through color, movement, light and shadow.”  “I believe this unites all of us in a very concrete way.”  “With realism, people are relating to the familiar and memory; through abstraction, others are willing to go deeper, let their imagination wander a bit, those are our people.”

“Klara Calitri:  Allegories,”  Zone Three Gallery, 152 Maple Street, 3rd Floor, West Ridge Office Building – In the Marbleworks, Middlebury, VT,  September 10 through October 30.  Info: 802-989-9992, www.ZoneThreeGallery.com.

This article was written by Mirabelle Ross.

Levitation is Happening Now

The artist’s arrival is imminent; tonight in fact. You will get a chance to learn from Graziella Weber-Grassi the art of levitation. With this new mixed media series she once again demonstrates powerful insight through the use of nostalgic vignette. By peering into the oddly private world of the familiar, we quite unexpectedly catch some of the furniture in mid-air. In the great room we are also featuring Graziella’s large-scale acrylic on canvas works. Juxtaposed flashes of childhood and fragmented iconic imagery create a recognizable storyboard that defines our precarious confluence with the past.

Come to the gallery and be lifted up.

Alive and Levitating Into the Heat of the Night

Rosenquist’s female doppelganger, Graziella-Weber Grassi, has transformed the gallery into a stunning retro-surrealistic wonderland for the duration of summer. Floating furniture surrounds; the actual furniture I believe is slightly jealous. Walking through the gallery gives one the feeling of lifting off and peeling away of life’s burdens – this is how it should be in summer: We move easy, slowing a little, take more time to enjoy company, mingle with a cool drink, gaze at shorelines or dive into lakes, creeks and flowing rivers, collectively drift into dream states…all can be seen and done at Zone Three (and in the cool air conditioning).

June After Blog

June Atmospheres –  a live after party update – Arts Walk in full swing – The night was picture perfect, windows blown open wide – sound of the waterfall cascading in, Atmospheric to be sure…  In addition to the featured artist’s work  – Atmospheres 1 and 2, displayed in the main gallery (open during regular business hours through this month) and Cruising Blue at 38,000 feet elevation – exhibited in the platform gallery, A new gallery room was added  – the East Room, featuring MP Landis’ work..  A warm thank you to all who attended – we are already busy at work prepping for July’s blow out show – Levitation – 30 new pieces from Graziella Weber-Grassi (as well as some of her large works coming to nest at the gallery for the season)….Z3

Alive, Alive

It is spring and the gallery is in full swing. This month’s show, Atmospheres by Rachel Baird, is a minimalistic new mixed media journey through the just visible ether of our physical realm. In Atmospheres 1, a heavy humid summer night is captured, showing subtle geometric waveforms moving through mid-air. The series of images in Atmospheres 2 captures people and objects seen through this circular lens of water and midnight. In Cruising Blue at 38,000 Feet Elevation, following the sunrise over to Ireland, slight changes in the inverted blue horizon create a hypnotic passage.  

With her clear modernist talent for capturing in abstraction what is physically evident but always slightly hidden, Rachel peels away the obvious surface to take a look at the current that runs through all life. For the opening reception this Friday, June 14th – 5-7 p.m. (during the Middlebury Arts Walk), the gallery will be showing the companion film to Atmospheres,Nightlights will be playing continuously in the main gallery. In Nightlights – the same summer water orbs of pulsing colors beat in and out of a dark world – wrapped inside a soundtrack of ocean sounds from the filming location and otherworldly hearts of space beats, this film mesmerizes.

Wide Awake and Getting Ready to Dance Across the Creek

Just finished hanging the Train and Creek show in our Main Gallery….this work is soulful, moving – folks in the building just passing through were observed standing around studying and gazing into the depth of field of these extraordinary mixed media pieces. I heard several utterances of “wow.” Zone Three is truly elated to have M P Landis at the gallery. What an amazing addition his work is. You can feel the essence of this place, Middlebury, Vermont, Addison County, from where he pulled up meaning and laid it down on the page. Get ready for our opening reception, this coming Friday, May 10th from 5-7 p.m.

And to start the Arts Walk season off with a little flare – the skirl of the pipes will be heard at 5:00 p.m. – highland pipes in front of the Zone Three Gallery building (and heard throughout town as well, no doubt) to be followed by a Celtic Music Concert in the Gallery’s Great Room with Green Mountain Celts. I am putting my jig shoes on for this one.

Alive and Dreaming in the Month of Hearts

The month of hearts is here and so “My Pooling Heart” arrives in a timely fashion. In this series by Rachel Baird acrylic on canvas and acrylic on paper images dismantle the heart in stages to peer beneath the outer surface into snapshots of what affects the heart both physically and emotionally.….Sorrow over collective suffering, personal loss, broken romances and physical degeneration all lie beneath a beating heart. The heart is the ruler of our bodies, the arteries a superhighway conducted from the source. The heart is many things…perhaps an opening. This exhibit is featured in the main gallery through February 28th.

Also exhibiting this month—at the National Bank of Middlebury, “Sardinian Cupids” by Graziella Weber-Grassi. These clever and whimsical collages have winged cherubs popping out of cloud filled sardine cans….each features a unique cancelled stamp—all the better to fly…

Aftermath

The Opening Reception and Holiday Fete: Adding by hand, the people who came to the event, stared at the 4×6 foot “Archangel Michael on the Move,” listened to live Celtic harp music with harpist Bolton Price, saw all the manner of angels then went forth lighter (a considerable amount), the amount of chicken mole hand pies eaten (dozens), the number of Glam Raphael new mixed media works that flew out the door and how much glitter that entails (I cannot even fathom), the number of cupids you can squeeze into a sardine can (an undetermined many). The show continues through the end of this month and can be viewed in the main gallery from 8 a.m.–6 p.m. (Monday–Friday) and as always, in the great room and the rest of the gallery, by appointment.  Here’s wishing everyone a beautiful and artful Christmas.

Our Holiday Show: All Manner of Angels

Our Holiday show is fast approaching and angels are multiplying around the place… every shape and size…Just finishing the hundred eyes on “Archangel Michael” a 5×6 foot semi-abstract rendering in oil on canvas of my favorite of all the angels. It has been an interesting process, begun in Rome recently with images, some abstract and ethereal taken while running around Roma in search of angels, creating prints on art papers, then back in Vermont studying the references to each angel, retracing their stories and meditating on their essence before creating my interpretations in paint.

Graziella Weber-Grassi has been busy in her studio as well creating all forms of inventive euro-angel prints and collages, angels holding the planet up, cupids in a sardine can. Come and be amazed, you might even hear a wing or two in motion. Opening Reception, December 14th 5-7 – with Celtic harpist Bolton Price and a holiday fete befitting the angels.

Wide Awake and in honor of his Holiness, the Dalai Lama’s soon to be visit to Middlebury

Just finished hanging the installation for October at the gallery. Featuring two truly unique and talented felt artists this month.

The gallery is filled with “Vermont Prayers” – by Deborah Allen – what an amazing visual, textural and spiritual convergence – the humble gallery brimming with all these colorful prayers from the people of Vermont is a sight to truly behold and experience for one’s self – Deborah’s artistic vision has come to life in stunning silk on wool felt made in the colors of our Vermont autumn.

“God, Dogs and Fishes” by Christa Fisher is featured on the main gallery wall – a whimsical masterful piece of cold felting artistry – Christa truly captures the sheer unadulterated joy of dogs running in the surf– you can’t help but smile – their happiness is palpable.

I have also placed an antique prayer wheel on the table for use this month.  I hope you get a chance to come by – the gallery is open from 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. – Monday through Friday and by appointment.  Feel free to come and spend some time with these soulful works of art.