ABOUT ABSTRACT ARTIST JOANNE CALOCERINOS ( a.k.a. Kali )

Joanne Calocerinos was born in the early 1900's on a small island in Greece.She started painting at the age of twenty-three. Her preferred mediums were tempera on showcard and oil on high quality linen canvas.

" In my early twenties I wanted to seek the truth. It became my sacred quest. "

This endeavor expressed itself in unique creations. The quest and the art became synonymous. One fed the other. The art expressed her inward journey.

Joanne's technique is one of a kind and because the colors of her paintings are luminescent and graduate ever so slowly from one color to another, she has been able to achieve a glow within her art that is very unique. Her creations were done by hand, long before she even thought about computers. To this day she really avoids computers as she considers them to be " unfamiliar territory ". As her daughter, I have personally observed her technique. She would put two or more oil colors on her wooden palate, very separate. She would chose one of the two colors to start with and begin the painstaking process of painting one line at a time. Each line she created the same width by utilizing the width of the brush as her guide. Each line is the same width because the line is only as wide as the brush. Although this is a very rigorous exercise, freedom came to her by allowing the first line to be created wherever she felt right and to stop whenever and wherever. Then, inside that line, she would create a rope effect by adding diagonal brush strokes. Therefore, not only are her paintings composed of lines, but diagonal lines within those lines. Again, the distance between the diagonal lines was the same as the brush width so there was little variation. After finishing this line, she would ever so gradually add more and more of a different color to each succeeding line. This technique gives the paintings a special glow and rope effect of vivid structure, creates the illusion of movement and also adds dimension, liquidity, and texture to the paintings. The combination of the rope effect with the gradual change of color transforms these two dimensional canvases into a multidimensional experience. Hence, the paintings reach higher realms of existence.

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Sacred Geometry

Symmetrical within asymmetry, a puzzle unlocked within the lock that precludes, yet surpasses, all understanding of the journey that flows within, without, and throughout me and you.

Melissa Calocerinos' impression of Joanne's expression.

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Portrait of Joanne Calocerinos (a.k.a. Kali) by Ray Pantaleone (1950's)

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Towards the End of the Line

The dream keeps on dreamin, point by point, up and down the line, in the line and through the line, and out of the line, into every other line, creating the infinite within infinity, where the end of the line makes a new beginning.

Melissa Calocerinos

This poem was inspired by Joanne's line by line technique.

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Portrait of Joanne Calocerinos (a.k.a. Kali) by Eugene Hurtienne (1950's)

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Upon completion of a given masterpiece, no one was more amazed than the artist herself. She did not consciously produce images, but many light images and forms are in fact manifested in her art. Often, she was not aware of these images and forms within a painting until the painting finished itself. She sees herself as a vehicle of expression. Her motto is:

" Love not the artist, but stand in awe of

the TRUE CREATOR responsible for their expression. "

Joanne Calocerinos continued creating her paintings for approximately forty-four years. Near the age of seventy, about ten years before the creation of this online museum, she decided to lay down her paintbrush forever. Unfortunately, many of her earliest works were lost, destroyed, or damaged and all that remain of them are photographs. It is her vision to share her surviving art form with the world through this online museum.

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Around 1958, through a friend in N J, I became acquainted with a man living in Cuba (but not a national). We never met but had a correspondence spanning several years. Early on he offered to have an exhibition of my work. I mailed him a number of paintings, rolled up in tubes. I do not recall the exact number. While this was going on, Fidel Castro was in the process of becoming the leader of Cuba. I particularly recall that three of the paintings were returned to me, hanging out of the tube and badly damaged. They are still in the same condition-damaged but not dead. The rest of the paintings were lost and never recovered. The exhibit never took place. My friend eventually returned to Spain, and has since passed on.

In 1959 I spent six months (April through September) on the island of my birth in Greece, where I produced a lot of my work in a house belonging to my father, built with stone walls 2 feet thick. As there was an absence of electricity I painted on a large table by a small window during daylight hours. I took time out to eat or accomplish whatever tasks were at hand-returning to the table until it started to get dark.

Joanne Calocerinos