The Young Old Artist
When Pat Calabro contemplated retiring from the corporate world five years, she felt scared. What on earth was she going to do with herself? Take up golfing? Become fully addicted to TV?
The answer to her question lay hidden beneath the thick layers of her work-filled life like a sunflower seed that is trapped underneath an overturned plywood box.
Oh, all along there were small indicators of Pat’s future career as an artist. At the office, sitting among fellow nine-to-fivers wearing conservative grey suits was Pat, dressed in a splash of strong purple, grinning happily, her lips painted fire engine red.
On a psychology test administered to all employees in her company, Pat scored orange, which meant she was a creative type.
Also, there were times when Pat experienced flights of creativity, Zen moments, when she became absorbed in designing computer programs and her mind went into a bright, ethereal meditative state. Later, when she was retired and free to be a full time artist, Pat recognized this state of mind to be the creative process.
The day Pat handed in her retirement paperwork, it was as though the plywood box covering the sunflower seed was shifted to another place in the garden. Suddenly, the right conditions of sun, soil, and rain happened. The sun flower seed could germinate, take root, grow and bloom!
Pat Calabro blooms!
Upon retirement, Pat quickly gravitated to her first art teacher, Charles White, a classical landscape painter.
Not surprisingly, she found she could paint.
Then, her second teacher came along. Pat took a class in Japanese Sumi-e ink painting from Ann Nagatani, revealing a latent Asian flair. She jokes about it. One of her old corporate world bosses, a Malaysian, once said, “You must have been Asian in another life time. You eat more rice than any other white person I have known!”
It was Ann Nagatani who gave Pat her chop, the traditional red ink stamp that Japanese artists use to sign their work.
“I adopted my chop after my ink teacher taught me it in Kanji. I liked it because in my mind it looked like a girl dancing,” explained Pat.
Looking at her artwork, one can find the same celebratory essence reflected in the dancing girl of Pat’s ink stamp. Her images move and spin.
Whirling Dervish, Photoshop painting, 2010
The flying leap into pure self-expression occurred when this young old artist took Photoshop classes at Diablo Valley College from Jerry Fisher.
Working with computers was familiar to Pat from her previous job as a programmer. She was able to move freely about the computer screen, transforming pictures of flowers into explosions of abstract forms.
“The ’how to’ involves about 100 Photoshop layers with changes to filters, blend modes, distortions and masks,” said Pat.
“Printing is also an adventure,” she added.
Her DVC Photoshop teacher remarked that he had never in his life encountered a similar methodology as hers.
Pat’s art education is on-going. Every Tuesday evening, she attends a life drawing session in Crockett. Also, Wednesday afternoons and Thursday evenings are spent at I’ve Been Framed in Martinez in a wood sculpting class taught by Jim Marieiro. Pat is carving a life-sized robin.
Pat Calabro became a member of the Martinez Gallery artists co-op in February 2009. We all are enjoying watching her development as an artist. She possesses a mind capable of synthesizing a variety of pieces of information into a single astonishing result. The future most certainly holds a curious blend of all of these different fields and art techniques she is exploring.
Article by Jen Copeland
Photos by Paul Craig and Anne McEntorffer
mARTinez Gallery 