small gifts BIG INSPIRATION
BY LUCRETIA VOIGT INDEPENDENT ARTS WRITER
The holiday season is upon us, and with that the endless glitz and bling-bling of holiday shopping. Starting this Sunday, however, you can take a break from the hectic pace and bask in the aesthetics of art at the Holiday Small Works Show at the Joyce and Seward Johnson Gallery of the Nantucket Artists' Association, 19 Washington St.

"MORNING CHOP" VINCENT CALARCO

The Holiday Small Works Show is limited to works 11" x 14" or smaller. This size allows the artists to exhibit four pieces of their work as opposed to the traditional two per show. It makes the most of the gallery space and creates a smorgasbord for your eyes worthy of any holiday buffet. The small size also lends the artwork to easy "cash and carry," creating the perfect gift shopping experience when considering those hard to buy for friends and family. The work of many artists will be displayed, including artists Vincent Calarco and Susan Whelihan.

VINCENT CALARCO

Vincent Calarco often paints plein air and his canvasses not only capture the quality but transport you to the site of his inspiration. "My process is trying to capture on canvas what I feel about my surroundings, particularly my love for Nantucket and love for the sea," he recently explained. "I spend a great deal of time fishing and I work as a Ranger on Great Point in the summer. I try to capture the emotional feeling I get from being outside on Nantucket and the uniqueness of Nantucket."

"QUAHOG" VINCENT CALARCO

Calarco paints in oils, and his works evoke the beauty and serenity of the Nantucket landscape. His painting career did not begin in the wide open spaces of nature, however, but in the hustle and bustle of New York City.

"My mother was a stagedoor mother because my brother was in the theater on Broadway," said Calarco. "I don't know how many tap dancing lessons I had to go to and painfully watch! My mother brought my brother to New York for his lessons and he started having some parts in the City. I would go along and I would go off to art lessons while he went off to his acting. The family was fairly creative."

Calarco's family made the trek from Hazelton, Penn. to New York City every week. Finally one summer he resided in the YMCAso he could apprentice under painter Albert Pels. This apprenticeship lasted for three years, and Calarco credits Pels with the beginning of his art career.

"BLISS" VINCENT CALARCO

Like so many artists, however, he had to leave his first love to make a living. "I moved back to Pennsylvania, determined that perhaps what I liked in life would not be achieved with a fulltime art career," he recounted. "The competition is extremely tough. I thought maybe I should have another career, so I went to college and received a Bachelor of Science degree in economics and a Master of Science in mineral economics."

Eventually Calarco was able to retire and move to Nantucket where he could once again pick up his paintbrush and converse with his muse. "I paint every day. I am a morning person and find it's the best time for creativity," he said about his process and the discipline an art career takes. "I try to put in four hours every morning, some successful, some not so successful. What I try to do every day is force myself to do something. If I get into a block, then I'll stretch canvasses."

"LATE GARDEN" SUSAN WHELIHAN

Calarco has been living on Nantucket full-time for 10 years, and the inspiration of his surroundings has given voice to his muse. Like so many fickle phenomena, however, one's muse can prove elusive at times. "My muse was gone for about four months this year," he said. "Finally I said 'That's enough!' I put a canvas up there, got a brush and some paint, put paint on the canvas and she came back." Calarco's muse was back on island.

SUSAN WHELIHAN

Susan Whelihan obviously took the adage "One man's trash is another man's treasure" to heart and turned it into art. "I'm going to be showing some broken plate mosaic pieces. My technique is called 'pique assiette,' a fancy French name for broken plate," she explained when asked about her entry in the Holiday Small Works show. "I find all of the bases for my mosaics by going to tag sales and antique sales. For my Nantucket box, I only had one of the boxes before I sold the first one. Then I found an identical box at a tag sale right around the time I sold the first one. It was one of those coincidences that are just too coincidental."

"NANTUCKET BOX" SUSANWHELIHAN

Even though she is relatively new to the art scene, Whelihan's talent is definitely not just a coincidence. "Before I moved to Nantucket, I lived in the Lower East Side [of New York City], off the City in the East Village. All over that area, and it's usually on the municipal structures, lampposts, walk/don't walk signs, artists had created these mosaics and stuck them on these structures. I was very inspired by what I saw in New York," she explained when asked about her mosaic works. "My favorite artist is Hundertwasser. What I like is that he does a lot of different types of work. One thing he would do is take a preexisting structure and add tiles, funky things like that. I always love doing things like that, taking something ugly and old or recycled and making it art."

Whelihan's own journey has taken her from Nantucket to San Francisco, then back to Nantucket. Through it all, however, her art work has interpreted her experiences. "I started experimenting with mosaics when I lived here for the first time in 2000," she said. "I was just sort of experimenting and not making that many finished pieces. I continued with them when I moved to San Francisco. The first piece I ended up doing was in a window pane structure. I drove myself across the country, and it gave me a lot of time to think about Nantucket and my journey across the country. The pane travels from Nantucket style with rosa rugosas and sea gull tiles, then the Mississippi River, through the Midwest, then ends in San Francisco. I filled the top in with blues and some yellow for the sun and used tiles that represented grass colors and earthy colors. At the bottom I used red for the center of the earth. I still have it. It's one I can't sell because it has too much meaning."

"DAFFODIL PARADE" SUSAN WHELIHAN

Like her mosaics, Whelihan's life is made up of travels and sparks of creativity. She's not one to let the moss grow under her feet, or her work or life to become stagnant. "It's really funny. When I was in graduate school learning to become a career counselor, my instructor said that artists are the most difficult people to employ because it is hard to keep them satisfied and challenged," she said. "That hit home with me. Not long after that I moved back to Nantucket and got very involved in the art scene." She keeps adding tiles to her own life, challenging

herself and making art from the materials at hand. I

- The opening reception of the Holiday Small Works Show at the Nantucket Artists' Association Joyce and Seward Johnson Gallery, 19 Washington Street, will take place on Friday, November 23 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.