Speaking with paint and clay, Klara Calitri is a woman of many languages
Cornwall , VT
If anything defines Klara Calitri, it is her house. While most people decorate their homes with items from stores and catalogs, Klara does everything herself. An exotic shower made with handpainted tiles, a sculptured cat vase peering over a bowl of fruit, a Mayan fountain that tells the story of creation - these objects speak of a creative spirit at work.
Klara is best known for her porcelain bowls, decorated with colorful floral patterns. President Clinton even purchased one last summer. But Klara's home shows that she isn't afraid of any project. Besides pottery, Klara is an accomplished painter and has also dabbled in drawing, woodwork and even welding.
"Art is a language that you learn," says the 74-year old artist. "It's a continual learning process."
Klara knows about languages. She was born in Austria, "at the crossroads of Europe," and learned to speak French, German, Spanish, Latin and English. "But my Spanish is rusty," she warns. Although Austria was a beautiful place to call home, Klara's family fled the country when Adolph Hitler rose to power.
"It was pretty drastic," Klara remembers of the Nazi movement. "My father barely escaped a concentration camp. We got him out just in time."
When Klara came to New York City in 1939, at the age of 17, she says "Language teachers were scarcer than hen's teeth." She ended up studying at Trinity College in Brilliantine, Vermont, where she fell in love twice: with her eventual husband Junius, and with the Green Mountain State. After obtaining degrees at the University of Vermont and Cornell University, Klara settled down with "Junie" for many years in Peekskill, New York.
But the Calitris never forgot Vermont.
"We always wanted to move here when we could afford it," she says. "We kept our ski place at Mad River Glen and came up whenever we could."
When Klara did retire to Vermont, she took on "painting and potting" full-time. Her work is influenced by her childhood surroundings, the work of the Wiener Werkstatte and Impressionism. Some pieces reflect the simplicity of Vermont vegetation, while others explore Klara's extensive knowledge of art in other lands. Klara was attracted to ceramics because of its light reflectiveness, its sculptural and "earthy" properties and its rugged permanence. But if she was looking for ease of use, porcelain would not be her first choice.
"Porcelain has a mind of its own," she says, shaking her head at a bowl. "It has a memory - it warps back to its original form. It also cracks very easily with temperature changes."
Klara's approach to pottery is decidedly low-tech. For one thing, she does not use a pottery wheel to achieve forms like a bowl. Instead, she spreads a layer of clay around a stone and paddles it into a curved shape. If she wants to curve the lip in, she uses a smaller stone. "This is what the Indians did in North and South America," she says. "They either coiled or paddled the clay."
Although porcelain can be cantankerous, it offers advantages, as well. The colors Klara achieves with porcelain could never be achieved with stoneware. When she paints glazes on bisqueware, the colors are pastel soft. But when they come out of the kiln, the painted garden has come to life in a bold celebration of primary colors.
"I must be thinking of spring," Klara says, a slight Austrian accent still present. "I'm making tulips like crazy!"
The source of this inspiration is obvious: from Klara's house, there is a view of rolling fields giving way to Lake Champlain and the Adirondack mountains. Chickadees, snowbirds and finches fly between gardens and trees. Deer visit to eat from the small apple orchard. In November, Klara even saw two partridges in a pear tree - honest!
Inside, the chickadees are frozen in porcelain at the center of a Chinese fountain. Sculptures of Zeus and Poseidon loom over geranium bowls. Every detail, right down to the handmade light switches, has been rendered with love.
If Klara is right - that art is a language of sorts - then hers involves keen eyes, a creative mind,knowing hands and a big heart.
For more information about the work of Klara Calitri, call the Vermont State Craft Center at Frog Hollow at 802-388-3177. CraftWise is a joint project of the Vermont Crafts Council and the Vermont State Craft Center, with the purpose of promoting the work of Vermont craft artists.
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