Dee (Denise) Calzavara

Dee (Denise) Calzavara
Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada

STATEMENT

Dancing in my mind for years was the memory of the wall I collaged, with colourful magazine clippings, in my teenage bedroom. After art training and years of creating all manner of art I decided to indulge in
my love of analog collage again. I flip through magazines randomly collecting images that call to me, “Hey, cut me out! You’ll need me someday!” With stacks and stacks of images from magazines, calendars, old books, cards, etc. I piece these Ready-mades into new images that sprout from my imagination. The mixing and matching of images evolves in an unplanned and playful way, (it’s like the art “Happenings” in the 1960-70s) you don’t know what will emerge. I play with replacing the different pieces for hours, sometimes days, until the new creation is satisfying. This is my favourite way to make collage art. At other times the artworks are created thanks to a theme I’m studying. Design or colour will often direct my work (like my “Sacred Spiral” series).

Collage is an expressive art. It can be dreamlike and surreal. It lends itself to helping one express their unconscious emotions. Gluing the images to canvases, or sturdy matte board, can be a gooey and messy process which, like the scissor work, satisfies my need to be kinetically involved. The creative process of collage art absorbs me in its clutches for hours on end…or until my fingers get so stuck together with glue that I have to stop!

BIO

Dee (a.k.a. Denise) worked in the field of nursing for several years. When the flowers in that field stopped blooming that’s when the greener pastures of ART opened up for her. During her years at the Ontario College of Art and Design her new passion was well fertilized. At first her art career focused on the motto “when life goes to pieces…creativity as healing”. In 2011 she had a 15-year retrospective art show by that name which included over 100 art creations.

There was a variety of different art making mediums in that exhibit. The majority of the works involved putting pieces together. She claimed to have a “palette full of pieces”, not just paint! This brought her original love of Collage Art back into the forefront of her artistically creative soul, leading her to a solo art show titled: “Sacred Spirals and Teardrops as Prisms”. This is an art show of over 60 of her collaged artworks, on canvases, scheduled to be exhibited for the first time at Gibson Gallery from 7 September-1 October 2023.

ARTIST CONTACT

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