The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Washington art park to feature collage artist
WASHINGTON —The Judy Black Memorial Park and Gardens welcomes Nadine Kalachnikoff and her exhibit, “Nadine Kalachnikoff Collection” on view, opening April 14. The show will highlight Kalachnikoff’s three-dimensional collages featuring butterflies on canvas.
According to event organizers, though Kalachnikoff is not a professionally trained artist, she has always surrounded herself with talented artists from a very young age.
“It’s all magic to me,” she said. “How they see colors, nature, light, humor, madness and life itself—it’s fascinating.”
Due to her parents’ influence, her international circle of friends included creative geniuses such as Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Roy Halston, Earnest Hemingway, Ava Gardner, Marlon Brando, Mary Pickford, Gunter Sachs, Fernando Sanchez, and Elsa Peretti.
Kalachnikoff said she became inspired to try her own hand at creating art after a particularly bad day.
“I went home, dove in the pool and started to ask my guardian angels to help me,” she said. “All of the sudden, I looked up and saw a little yellow butterfly. At the time it didn’t mean anything to me, except that I enjoyed seeing the butterfly.
“Later that same evening, my husband came home and told me he needed a piece to adorn a wall in the restaurant that he was decorating,” she said.
Kalachnikoff then set to work creating three pieces featuring butterflies for the restaurant wall. To her surprise, all three pieces were quickly purchased. “So I started painting more,” she said, “and I love it.”
Kalachnikoff works almost exclusively in acrylic, using feathers and papyrus to create the butterflies which she attaches to canvases.
“Her works are light, free and evoke an ever-present sense of the shifting nature of change. Butterflies also represent a return of life, and Kalachnikoff seeks to capture that positive quality in her works,” according to event organizers.
“Now I have my own home art studio where I play music while painting,” she said. “I occasionally even enjoy sipping on a shot of vodka, which would make my very Russian father proud.”
When not painting, Kalachnikoff and her husband, Lars Bolander, enjoy traveling the world, spending time with their two sons and experiencing all four seasons as recent transplants from Palm Beach, Fla.
An opening reception will be held from 3-5 p.m. April 15 at the park. The show continues through May 21.
Learn more about the garden’s ongoing community programs and events calendar or how to make a donation at judyblackpark.org.