It’s a Small World

Dolls, fish and ethnic trinkets become subjects in Jeanne Calo’s paintings, on view at the University Medical Center at Princeton.

By: Ilene Dube

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TIMEOFF PHOTOS/MARK CZAJKOWSKI
Jeanne Calo (above) surrounded by folk art that becomes inspiration for her artwork (below).


   Against a deep magenta sky, fish hang like ripe fruit from a tree with purple bark. Two cats wait below, eyes fixed on what will become lunch. In another painting, "Aquarium," a group of girls watch fish swim in an enormous tank — but the girls are actually Russian dolls. More dolls are watching elephants in the painting titled "The Circus Comes to Town."
   With their bright colors and folkloric style, these images have a touch of Frida Kahlo. They certainly look as if they were painted in Mexico or perhaps Cuba. But the artist, 89-year-old Jeanne Calo, was born in Tunis, Tunisia, speaks with a French accent and has lived in Princeton for 25 years. She has traveled the world, collecting trinkets wherever she goes, and these have become her subject matter.
   The paintings will be on view at University Medical Center at Princeton through May 18. Eighty percent of the sales will go toward the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, and 20 percent will help the medical center in the establishment of a new community Breast Health Center.

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   Painting is a late-in-life metier for the octogenarian, who went to law school in Tunis, raised four children in the United States with her husband, a cardiologist, and taught French and Italian at Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey) for 15 years. After retiring in 1985, she began studying painting with Mel Leipzig at Mercer County Community College.
   "I tried painting figures and landscapes, but they looked too much like everyone else’s paintings," she says from a sunny room in her home that is filled wall-to-wall with stacks of her colorful canvases. "When Mel Leipzig saw a painting I did of a mask from Ecuador, he said, ‘You have to go in that direction, you should continue painting objects.’"

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Fish of all shapes and sizes fill a wall of Jeanne Calo’s kitchen and populate her paintings.


   Behind a lush green backyard, a swimming pool is enclosed by a chain-link fence and covered with plastic. Ms. Calo says she never uses the pool, but goes to the UMCP’s fitness center on Route 206 daily for her workout, including a swim. When she remembers something she wants to show her visitors, she runs up and down the stairs like a 10-year-old; her visitors can barely keep up.
   Ms. Calo, who continues to host French, Italian and music groups in her home, is a consummate collector. Her home is like a gift shop of all the places she’s traveled — Japan, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Egypt, Guatemala, Ecuador, Spain, Portugal, Italy… and that’s just the beginning. "I love Mexico," she says, and it is evident in the colors of her paintings.
   Since her husband died 20 years ago, and her children moved to Washington, D.C., Scarsdale, N.Y., England and Switzerland, she has lived alone. But she is never by herself, surrounded by a wall of masks in one room, shelves of dolls, animals, figurines, Japanese prints, ceramic pieces, quilts and textiles. "I have so much, I had to start hanging it on the ceiling," she says. Above us dangle a frog, a cherub, a winged mermaid.
   It sounds like the potential for massive clutter — what if, one day, when opening the front door it all pours out and smothers an unfortunate onlooker? — but it is amazingly orderly, no dust or cobwebs. Themes, country of origin, type of object — all are taken into consideration in Ms. Calo’s organizational scheme.
   "My husband would never have accepted all of this; he preferred an empty house," she says.
   One wall of the kitchen is covered with fish. Most of these are ceramic, and most are plates, but there are miscellaneous fish objets interspersed. "I started with two and they multiplied," she says. Some of the ceramic fish were made by Ms. Calo before retiring from Trenton State, where she took ceramics courses with Ilse Johnson. "I didn’t continue with ceramics because you accumulate heavy things you don’t know what to do with."
   And that is a key to her collecting: most of the things are small and easily displayed in groups, such as a gathering of needlepoint evening bags hanging from a wall of her living room.
   Oddly, there is little from her Tunisian and French background, except for her (relatively) spare bedroom that has Directoire-style furnishings.
   "We moved to Paris when I was 2," she relates. "My father was naturalized French. His father, a rabbi, wanted him to be a rabbi, but he wanted to be an engineer and studied at the Ecole Centrale in Paris. We moved to Paris so (my father) could work on bridges and roads."
   At 22, Ms. Calo married her second cousin and moved back to Tunisia so he could practice cardiology. After Independence, the couple moved to the U.S. "All the Americans we met we liked, and we thought they would all be so pleasant," she says. The couple lived in Browns Mills, and Ms. Calo earned her master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania while teaching French in Pennington. In 1970 she become a professor at Trenton State.
   She continues to study with Mr. Leipzig twice a week at MCCC. "It helps me to make a whole of my life," she says. "I like foreign cultures, films, exotic things and different colors. I paint what I like and it’s a pleasure to be with the objects I like and put them on canvas. I’m not thinking about the message, nor do I want to tell something about myself — I just like color and organizing objects." She has developed her own style. "People who know me can recognize my paintings."
   Ms. Calo has been exhibiting her paintings since 1990 at such venues as Failte Coffee Shop in Hopewell, Ellarslie Museum, Artworks, the Nassau Club and Princeton Hills Gallery, among others.
   She used to have an art group in her home, but "so many are in bad shape or passed away — it’s sad." She continues to take piano lessons with Sylvie Webb. "I’m not talented but I like it and it’s a pleasure to take lessons with her," Ms. Calo says. "I also study Spanish, but I do painting best. The end result is what I want in painting."
   In addition to the music groups in her home, where 50 people show up to play everything from classical piano to blues and the occasional singer, Ms. Calo hosts Community Without Walls meetings — "It’s for people 60 and older who want to continue to live in interesting ways and do challenging things." She is in two movie discussion groups and hosts a women-in-transition group. And between running to the gym, she reads textbooks for Recording For The Blind and Dyslexic. "My schedule is very tight," she admits.
   Through a good friend in her Spanish group, Ben Abeles, she volunteered for the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, serving meals, but learned that the group had more volunteers that it needs. So she decided instead to have a show of her paintings to raise money for TASK.
   "For me, it’s important to live in the present," she says. "On my trips, I take a lot of photographs, because I get crazy thinking I’ll never go back to that country, or I want a better angle. When I get home I fill albums but I never look at them because I want to live in the present.
   "I don’t want to have the blues, so I take advantage of everything that comes, being with friends and doing activities with them," she continues. "I’m not trying to be a better painter or pianist, I just want to continue to do things that are worthy. And if I don’t succeed, I don’t mind — there are other opportunities. I’m doing more than most people around me."
Acrylic paintings by Jeanne Calo will be on view in the dining room of the University Medical Center at Princeton, 530 Witherspoon St., Princeton, through May 18. Wine-and-cheese reception: April 22, 4-6 p.m. Dining room hours: Daily 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Eighty percent of the painting sales will go toward the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, and 20 percent will benefit the establishment of a new community Breast Health Center. For information, call (609) 497-4069.