Lilith Segulah For Anger

ה' באלול תשס"ז

From the Albany Times Union, For Love Of Lilith:

For love of Lilith
Hebrew goddess helped an angry artist see the light

By DANIELLE FURFARO, Staff writer
First published: Sunday, August 19, 2007

COLONIE -- Richard Callner sits in a wheelchair in his sprawling, multilevel home, staring lovingly at a Gobelin-style tapestry he made in Ein Hood, Israel, more than 30 years ago. The tapestry is rich with swirling colors and figures. It features his favorite goddess: Lilith.

Even though advanced Parkinson's disease has reduced Callner's voice to a scarcely audible whisper, he happily points out the details of the piece. With the help of his daughter, Joanne, he describes how he chose the colors of the tapestry from thousands of spools of yarn the Israeli weavers offered him.

"It works because of the complexity," he breathed.

Of the three tapestries he made on that long-ago trip, two of them hang in his home. The one in the dining room shows a side silhouette of the ancient goddess, who is regarded in Hebrew folklore as the first wife of Adam. She appears to be exhaling a menagerie of birds and flowers. The one hanging in a hallway shows Lilith in a variety of poses in the garden of Eden. She is lying on her back ... flying with birds ... becoming a bird.

At 80 years old, Callner is a legend in the international art world. His paintings have hung in spaces such as the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia; the Museum of Painting and Sculpture in Istanbul; and the Premio Internazionale Per L'Incisione in Biella, Italy. In 2003, the Albany Institute of History & Art held a 50-year retrospective of his work.

He has lived a rich, fruitful life reflected in his massive body of work. He fought in World War II, traveled the world and helped found the University at Albany Master of Fine Arts program. He taught there for almost two decades before retiring in 1991, but has continued to mentor scores of young artists.

Still working

Callner has suffered from Parkinson's for 25 years, yet has refused to stop making art. Even at this late stage, when his body shakes and he can no longer hold a brush steady, he still produces more in an average day than some artists do in a whole year.

Since he can no longer use his home studio, his wife, Carolyn, has dismantled it and they are preparing to sell their home. But at a drawing table in the living room, Callner sorts through more than two dozen small studies he has worked on in the past week. He said it takes him about two hours to complete a study and about four hours to make one of those studies into a full-sized painting.

"The quantity of work that has pored out of this man for his entire life is like a firehose," said Joanne Callner.

Earlier this month, nine of Callner's paintings were hung at the new Parkinson's Disease Center at Albany Medical Center Hospital. He sold the paintings to the hospital for a nominal price after Dr. Eric Molho, who has treated Callner for 15 years, suggested that the pieces would bring great inspiration to others suffering from the debilitating condition.

The watercolors hanging throughout the center reveal a zest for life and unmistakable playfulness. They capture a cross-hatch of brightly colored Spanish fields, apples sitting atop a table with tentacle-like legs and three slug-shaped people standing under an orange sky. They were painted in the mid-1990s, after Callner had already been suffering with the disease for 15 years.

"Even after he's been affected by Parkinson's, his art has evolved and he has continued to be important," said Molho. "It's a tribute to him but also an inspiration to our other patients."

Parkinson's is a degenerative disease of the brain that affects the production of dopamine, which controls movement. The main symptoms of the disease include slowness, stiffness, lack of motor control and tremor. The disease can be controlled in the early stages, but there is no cure.

An altered style

As the disease robbed Callner of his fine motor control, he had to change his style of painting. No longer could he create the intricate landscapes and interiors. Instead, his sense of abstraction increased. His paintings got noiser and his colors bolder.

Callner, who was raised in Chicago, grew up obsessed with art. As a teenager, he dropped out of high school to join the Navy during World War II.

After returning from war, he began formally studying art. Callner's style is culled from a variety of Euopean modernists. While in Paris, he studied with Cubist painter Fernand Leger. He received his MFA from Columbia University in 1952 and began teaching.

Callner spent these years painting angry, grotesque figures in muted colors.

In 1963, while teaching at Olivet College in Michigan, he became obsessed with Lilith. His discovery of the Hebrew goddess precipitated a change, not only in his art, but also in his outlook on life. Suddenly, his work embraced elements of humor, whismy and independence. Since then, most of his paintings have been soaked in vibrant colors and wild textures and abstractions. He began to use the image of Lilith repeatedly. Sometimes she would take the form of a woman, sometimes of a bird, sometimes of color.

Sharing with younger

For Callner, his art is not only what he puts on canvas. It is also sharing what he knows with the hundreds of younger artists who have looked up to him over the years. The artists who have had the chance to work with Callner or study under him say the man has left a monumental impression on not only their work and style, but on their lives.

"Richard is the person who got me to start painting intuitively," said Eileen Walker, who is a graduate of the UAlbany MFA program and works as Callner's assistant. "It's not an easy thing to get across to another person, much less teach it, but Richard has this love of passing along knowledge to those who want to learn it."

Val Tran, another UAlbany MFA, also worked as Callner's assistant while she was a student. In addition to cleaning his brushes and organizing his studio, she said he let her help with some of his underpaintings.

"He has his own specialized color theory," said Tran. "He teaches against the grain."

Walker agreed.

"He teaches you to never use colors out of the tube, to always mix them," said Walker. "It's an art, learning which colors push forward and which colors push back, without having a shape or form do that."

Walker and Tran have been planning an exhibit featuring the work of many of the artists who have worked as Callner's assistants over the years.

"We want to honor Richard and show how much he's given to us," said Walker.

Callner is in love with the palette itself. But when asked what his favorite color is, he can pick just one:

"The one that works."

Danielle Furfaro can be reached at 454-5097 or by e-mail at dfurfaro@timesunion.com.

Article posted in its entirety. This is a good article and news articles tend to be deleted after a short while. I want to save this one.

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