Jeanne Calo, Betty Curtiss, Graziella Valenti Smith and Marie Sturken do it up in reds, blues, yellows and all the colors in between at the Gallery at Mercer County Community College.
By: Megan Sullivan
After her children were grown and her husband had died, Graziella Valenti Smith decided she didn’t want to be a couch potato. Instead, the Monroe resident enrolled in a painting class taught by Mel Leipzig at Mercer County Community College in West Windsor.
"I walked into Mel’s class and his reception is so absolutely unquestioning," says Ms. Smith, radiating joy. "He said to me after the first day of class, ‘You keep coming back.’ And I’ve been going ever since."
Seven years later, the 76-year-old artist has no plans to put down her paintbrush. "Mel always leaves one with a taste for more," she says. "He encourages each of us to go to the next step. He’s a very, very gifted and life-giving teacher."
As part of its celebration of Women’s History month in March, the Gallery at MCCC is exhibiting works by Ms. Smith, as well as by Princeton artists Jeanne Calo, Betty Curtiss and Marie Sturken. The show, Color Theories, runs through April 6, with a gallery talk with all four artists March 27.
Although Ms. Smith had only briefly dabbled in painting as a young woman, artists always surrounded her. Born in New York City with Spanish and Puerto Rican roots, Graziella’s family had a deep appreciation for all forms of Spanish art and culture. Artists such as Andrés Segovia, Salvador Dalí and José Iturbi were among her family’s circle of friends.
At age 23, Ms. Smith married into an American family that also had a strong connection with the arts. Her husband, Tom Smith, was a talented architect who occasionally collaborated on projects with his brother, noted painter and sculptor Tony Smith. Tony’s daughter is well-known feminist artist Kiki Smith and his wife, Jane, was an opera singer and noted actress. Their circle of friends included Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Tennessee Williams, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler.
It seems only natural that Ms. Smith decided to embrace the arts on a more personal level. A couple of portraits of neighbors from Ms. Smith’s adult community are featured, one of whom she brought with her to the exhibit opening March 14. "I live in a blue-haired community," Ms. Smith says, running her fingers through her short locks. "An awful lot of us live very sedentary lives, looking at the television and never moving… so I’ve asked permission to paint them, without interrupting their TV watching, and I’ve gotten some wonderful portraits."
A number of Ms. Smith’s still life paintings also are on view, including those of vibrant and beautiful flowers like cyclamen and summer glads. "I paint flowers because I think they’re like a prayer," she says. "They culminate, they move to fullness, and that’s all they are here to do. And my desire is to bloom to fullness until I take off for another realm." One gallery-goer even became emotional while viewing one of Ms. Smith’s flower paintings, saying she could truly feel a luminous quality emanating from the artwork.
In fact, upon entering the cozy gallery space, it’s impossible not to feel a sense of joy in the presence of such bright and rich colors that leap out from all four artists’ works. The eye immediately moves to the bright acrylic paintings of Jeanne Calo, who was born in Tunisia and grew up in Paris. In "Siesta," two doll-like figures sit, legs outstretched, on green grass covered with colorful flowers. Birds drink from an ornate fountain, and a bright yellow sky and towering palm trees frame the scene. The two dolls that inspired the painting sit on a nearby table in the gallery, along with other handicrafts that inspired Ms. Calo’s work.
Having traveled extensively in South America, Europe, Africa and Asia, Ms. Calo acquired quite the collection of dolls, masks, wooden animals, embroideries and artifacts that find their way into her art. "I like traveling and I am very interested in cultures, much more interested in what people do with their hands in a village, primitive things, than I would like to buy beautiful china in a store," Ms. Calo says.
The 91-year-old artist didn’t begin painting until her retirement in 1985 from The College of New Jersey (then Trenton State), where she taught French and Italian. Like Ms. Smith, she enrolled in Mr. Leipzig’s classes at MCCC and discovered her muse. "Once I painted two masks in Mel’s class, two I had bought in Guatemala, and he said, ‘This is what you should paint, this is what you should do,’" Ms. Calo recounts. "He was extremely encouraging." She realized how relaxing and enjoyable painting was, and became extremely enthusiastic about her newfound talent. "In the beginning, it was like a shot of adrenaline, or some drugs that I was taking," she says of the experience.
Betty Curtiss also discovered painting later in life, having started out with a career in professional theater (at age 19, she was touring with Mae West and Burt Lahr). After raising her three daughters, Ms. Curtiss attended Douglass College to earn her bachelor’s degree. There she met Vicki Liberatori, with whom she founded Princeton Repertory Theater. While teaching creative theater in Glasgow, Scotland, in the early ’90s, she decided to take an art class at the city’s School of Art. She discovered that painting was a much welcome departure, through which she could still express her feelings artistically. Upon returning to New Jersey, she continued her studies with various artists at Artworks in Trenton.
Ms. Curtiss’ works on view include those from a series of Hunterdon County landscapes, a series of cows and pastures of the Skillman Dairy Farm and still lifes incorporating fish and vegetables. "I love fish and things that are kind of alive," she says. "I’ll see something, a form or shape or color, that sets me off."
Amidst the many paintings hang handmade paper works by Marie Sturken, a founding member of Princeton Artists Alliance. Most of these have a clothing theme, such as in "Multicolore." A colorful striped scarf wraps around a red turtleneck on handmade flax paper. It’s not a real scarf, Ms. Sturken points out, but an effect she created by putting yarns in layers, stitching and sewing into materials embedded in the pulp. "It’s wonderful to be able to put your imagery in the pulp that way and how it becomes a part of the paper itself instead of just a collage," she says.
Many of her other featured works show dresses on hangers, kimonos or incorporate dress patterns, images of tools of needlework and sewing thread. "I explain that by saying clothing is something that I did as a commercial artist, I was a fashion illustrator for years before I had children," Mr. Sturken says. "I did drawings of clothing for newspapers. I say that was B.C. before children."
Ms. Sturken learned printmaking when her family moved to Princeton in 1962, studying with printmaker Judith Brodsky at the newly opened Princeton Graphic Workshop. "I started suppressing my commercial work and I didn’t really tell people about it, but then it kept creeping into my prints prints of my work clothes, shirts, work aprons," Ms. Sturken says. She began papermaking 25 years later, when fellow artist Joan Needham introduced her to the Dieu Donne papermill in New York City, through which her early career in fashion still surfaces.
"This show offers the viewer an entry into the color-saturated, unique worlds of four women most of whom came to visual art later in life, and all of whom ‘are one’ with color," writes Gallery Director Tricia Fagan. "These are artists who have lived, and continue to live, full, rich lives and who are able to translate some of that richness into individual vibrant pieces of art."
Color Theories, featuring artwork by Jeanne Calo, Betty Curtiss, Graziella Valenti Smith and Marie Sturken, is on view at the Gallery at Mercer County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road, West Windsor, through April 6. A gallery talk with all four artists will be held March 27, noon. For more information or show hours, call (609) 570-3589.

