Artist in Residence - the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

  • In 2006 Calinescu was invited to spend three months as artist in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation...
    The studio at the Albers Foundation, Connecticut, 2006.

    In 2006 Calinescu was invited to spend three months as artist

    in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in

    Connecticut. This was a life changing experience.

     

     

  • Extract from “The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Residency” by Emma Hill 2006 “Calinescu recalls arriving after a late spring...

    The studio at the Albers Foundation, Connecticut, 2006.

    Extract from “The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Residency” by Emma Hill 2006

     

    “Calinescu recalls arriving after a late spring fall of snow, the forest of silver birch trees a leafless, uncluttered grid of vertical planes. She talks of long, solitary walks, the palpable silence and of how the immense studio window gave the sense of being able to pass effortlessly in and out of the landscape. 

    Weeks of concentrated, uninterrupted work allowed a kind of freedom to progress ideas with a speed she had not previously experienced. Working at night on small scale images Calinescu experimented with various processes, incising lines into the surfaces of painted boards in a reversal of the processes she was using on the larger scale canvases. 

  • How the experience of the residency entered the work is measured less in formal changes within the paintings than in...
    Night time working in the Albers studio, Connecticut, 2006.

    How the experience of the residency entered the work is measured less in formal changes within the paintings than in the clarity and force of their emotional impact. 

    Though they are rooted in the experience of being in the sensory world (light and space are certainly implicit) the images are not attempts to represent or equate to natural phenomena. Their tension comes from the most subtle of nuances: how a line appears against a tone, how a shape registers at a certain scale, where the viewer finds themselves in relation to the size of the support.

     

    The paintings are the result of a kind of game of consequences, the potential for emotional effect dependent upon relationships that may, or may not, happen during the actions and decisions of process.”

    Extract from “The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Residency” by Emma Hill 2006