Biography
Calvert’s narrative accounts carve the urban and political landscape. His fluid, expansive perspective via these dramatic tableaus kneads together memory, sentiment and awareness. Calvert has done intaglio prints, stone lithographs, drawings, screen-prints, and woodcuts.
Other works include bas-relief cast paper etchings and a large scale painted fabric collaboration, Wishbone: Seoul/Sherbrooke, with Canadian and Korean artists based on his Animal Farm woodcuts. His work has shown internationally and is in numerous collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, Capital One, Grinnell College Permanent Collection and the New York Public Library Print Collection on 42nd street.
Two of his artworks were selected for The Best of Printmaking, Quarry Books, 1997, an international survey of contemporary printmaking. Mr. Calvert is the curator for The Levee, an international print portfolio featuring work by 28 artists from 6 countries.
The Levee was shown, from 1997-1999, in 9 venues including:
- Kogemura Paper Center, Kochi-ken, Japan
- Musee des Beaux Arts de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada
- The Crossroads School for Arts & Science, Santa Monica, CA
- Manhattan Graphics, New York, NY
He earned a BA in English from Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, a BFA, Printmaking, Kansas City Arts Institute and an MFA in Printmaking, Cranbrook Academy of Art. A native New York City boy, he resides in the Catskills now.
Contact
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Maternity
Scene recalls the day visiting my sister-in-law Theresa and brother David at the Maternity ward while their twin daughters were still in the hospital cribs, side by side following caesarean birth. Was there with Suzanne who had birthed a child previously and realizing there that men can never quite bridge the divide towards this essential of motherhood. Reaching out in empathy as a man but remaining always a distance. Requested not to be funny as Theresa still recovering and holding her side against belly laughs but every comment made is extra funny and physically painful.
Print done with spit-bite technique that allows “painting in aquatint tones” to put emphasis in certain areas and create mood before overall color printing.
New York Suite, Intaglio prints on cotton rag paper, 18” x 24”.
Enormous Daily Labors
The other animals peer into the farmhouse and try to see why the pigs can’t help with the farm chores. It turns out that the pigs are too busy with mysterious items called “reports, files, dossiers, and memorandums”. The other animals are unsure what they are actually but they observe these are pieces of paper that must be completely filled with writing, at which point they are thrown in the furnace and burned.
Woodcut print inspired by Animal Farm by George Orwell.
30” x 50”, seichosen kozo paper, hand spoon printed.
164 East…
A print from when I was living alone as a squatter in a funky city owned building. Someone was hitting and hitting the entry door for 30 minutes and, just when I finally opened the apartment door to see what was going on, a strange woman with blood in her eyes walked by me with an open knife. Her husband, a known loan-shark, was in his secret apartment upstairs with a friendly, other woman friend, but the steel door he installed to protect his money stash held out—for two more hours of his wife’s pounding, and no murder happened that night. She never saw me on her way upstairs and I didn’t open my door again to monitor either her exit or theirs.
New York Suite, Intaglio prints on cotton rag paper, 24” x 18”.
Noise
Noise depicts a warm, busy kitchen scene in New York on a New Year’s Eve. Suzanne speaks French primarily and is visiting and surrounded by new friends telling stories rapidly at high volume in English and Spanish while the delicious food is being experienced for the first time. Drawing starts in the lower corner with the artist reaching for a rum and coke and flows around the room. Print shows foreground and background separated out by color fields.
New York Suite, Intaglio prints on cotton rag paper, 18” x 24”.
Noise / Pen & ink
Noise depicts a warm, busy kitchen scene in New York on a New Year’s Eve. Suzanne speaks French primarily and is visiting and surrounded by new friends telling stories rapidly at high volume in English and Spanish while the delicious food is being experienced for the first time. Drawing starts in the lower corner with the artist reaching for a rum and coke and flows around the room. Print shows foreground and background separated out by color fields.
Women, Three
This was inspired during my graduate school years by seeing the demographics of the bus stops along Woodward Avenue in suburban Detroit. The racial divide between inner and outer city was stark then and in the predominately white suburbs, the bus stops had predominately African-American women waiting on the bus on this busy avenue where everyone whizzed by at 55 miles per hour. Presumably coming from working at jobs cleaning suburban homes and then heading back afterwards into the city. Sojourner Truth inspired the woman in the foreground—she, like me, was a New Yorker who traveled west to Michigan—she bought a home in the 1860’s in Battle Creek, Michigan. Rosa Parks was a Detroit resident who moved south and sparked a revolution by choosing to sit towards the front of a bus and I used her image for one of the conversing women. The other is based on a photograph in “The Americans” by Robert Frank of an African American nurse holding a young, white baby in a hospital. Three strong women.
Lemme see your skates
One time, coming back from ice-skating in the north end of Central Park near our home me and 2 brothers and three members of another family were walking along the road through the park when 6 young guys ran up on us and demanded to “lemme see your skates”. My oldest brother said no, so when they asked me, despite being terrorized by the confrontation as a slim 12 year old, I said no, realizing the “see” was a prelim to running away with them. The scene shows the two groups of six, ours as individuals, and theirs as figure flowing together and masked in a shifting footing. Many trips into the bath with this plate to build up the tones.
New York Suite, Intaglio prints on cotton rag paper, 18” x 24”.
Sacrifice / Paper Cast
Chine collé print about going with brother and his family to the aquarium in coney island and then to a Ukrainian restaurant in Brighton Beach under the El tracks. Big tables butting up to wall to wall mirrors and groups of men sitting with unopened liquor bottles awaiting the Saturday evening to come. So hungry from the fish museum with its distorted views. Our young 5 month old child placed in car seat on the table and the owner wants to hold her but then starts pitching her up in the air. The frenetic parents look for help from potential sacrifice as the meal arrives—waiter delivering shish kabab skewered on a real sword.
Papercast of the same image—bas-relief, teabag paper etching and cotton-rag pulp backing printed via a plaster mold.
New York Suite, Intaglio prints on cotton rag paper, 24” x 18”.
Central / Pen & ink
Chine collé print about going ice skating on New Year’s Day in NYC’s Central Park and discovering you are not the only urban citizens with this clever idea. Waiting and waiting and waiting in a never-moving line as you stare holes into the backs of the heads before you and gradually absorb the faces of the folks behind you while your circle embraces more physical space. Granite hillsides and cut stone pedestrian tunnels beckon escape while the Zamboni methodically smooths the ice surface between skate sessions and one solitary, lucky skater circles the rink in absolute freedom.
New York Suite, Intaglio prints on cotton rag paper, 18” x 24”.
5 Mississippi, 6 Mississippi / Color Collagraph
We used to play 3 against 3 touch-football in the parking lot of the East Harlem Projects in we lived in and which was located on the same large double block. Our game determined 5 parking spaces counted for a first down and you could slip between the parked cars for shedding a defender as long as the thrown ball didn’t skim a hood or a ragtop enroute to your outstretched hands. David always wore 57 jersey, though we had no pads, and loved being quarterback. Curved the space, used tracking perspective and enlarged the players to relay our focus as we played after school each fall afternoon till the dinner bell. The elementary school where I attended 1-2 grade is shown bottom center, next to childhood playground, and, in the upper right corner, our sandlot baseball field that occupied all our summer mornings. Color version uses a colograph plate to warm up the black and white version, printed first underneath the master block drop.
New York Suite, Intaglio prints on cotton rag paper, 24” x 18”.
5 Mississippi, 6 Mississippi
We used to play 3 against 3 touch-football in the parking lot of the East Harlem Projects in we lived in and which was located on the same large double block. Our game determined 5 parking spaces counted for a first down and you could slip between the parked cars for shedding a defender as long as the thrown ball didn’t skim a hood or a ragtop enroute to your outstretched hands. David always wore 57 jersey, though we had no pads, and loved being quarterback. Curved the space, used tracking perspective and enlarged the players to relay our focus as we played after school each fall afternoon till the dinner bell. The elementary school where I attended 1-2 grade is shown bottom center, next to childhood playground, and, in the upper right corner, our sandlot baseball field that occupied all our summer mornings. Color version uses a colograph plate to warm up the black and white version, printed first underneath the master block drop.
New York Suite, Intaglio prints on cotton rag paper, 24” x 18”.
Hindsight / Chalk Drawing
One year I took the etching of the block back to the block it depicted and, while the block was closed to traffic, translated the images into the 14 feet by 25 feet section on this Festival day of chalk drawing. The entire block was engaged in doing chalk drawings of various sizes but mine was directed towards replicating the full etching in color. Soon it became evident it was a lot of surface to cover alone in seven hours but hopefully one of my nephews and my childhood friend Mark and his kids showed up after a few hours to help flesh it out and keep my spirits up. Shown here from this fifth-floor fire-escape perspective is a view of Mark and I looking up after it was done. Note: Mark had just spent extra time covering a nasty oil leak on the street with lots of chalk and transforming one of my “etched sedans” into a nifty, red Ferrari.
Hindsight, chalk on street, 14 feet by 25 feet.
Hindsight
Shows an event on the block I grew up on when I was fixing a rear-looking convex mirror to my truck and, haphazardly, one of my childhood friends came by on his motorcycle. Having Michael help me that day folded memories of the past into the present actions and the drawing combines multiple views from my years living on 104th Street in East Harlem. Looking back in hindsight on years of existence and bending space like a convex mirror does to what is behind us.
New York Suite, Intaglio prints on cotton rag paper, 18” x 24”.
Biscuit
Biscuit, Temptation and Biscuit / Temptation were made from two blocks I created when we had our first “open house/open studio” at the Atelier Daumier, cooperative print workshop in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The sun was casting an intriguing shadow and I had it traced onto two mahogany veneer woodblocks pre-prepped with black sumi ink—first the image of me holding aloft the “Biscuit”—french for cookie, in this case a Lorne Doone tea social- and then leaning to succumb to eating the biscuit—Temptation. I left the blocks out during the open house and encouraged visitors to carve outside the silhouette on Biscuit and inside the traced line on Temptation. I carve the silhouette before they began and a few of the lines of the final images and the words into the wood but most lines were done by the enthusiastic visitors over the two day period. I always planned to print them separately as Biscuit and Temptation and to super-impose one over the other to create Biscuit / Temptation and have enjoyed how the center image of the triptych has delightful sections that could only exist because of the overlapped printing.
Temptation
Biscuit, Temptation and Biscuit / Temptation were made from two blocks I created when we had our first “open house/open studio” at the Atelier Daumier, cooperative print workshop in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The sun was casting an intriguing shadow and I had it traced onto two mahogany veneer woodblocks pre-prepped with black sumi ink—first the image of me holding aloft the “Biscuit”—french for cookie, in this case a Lorne Doone tea social- and then leaning to succumb to eating the biscuit—Temptation. I left the blocks out during the open house and encouraged visitors to carve outside the silhouette on Biscuit and inside the traced line on Temptation. I carve the silhouette before they began and a few of the lines of the final images and the words into the wood but most lines were done by the enthusiastic visitors over the two day period. I always planned to print them separately as Biscuit and Temptation and to super-impose one over the other to create Biscuit / Temptation and have enjoyed how the center image of the triptych has delightful sections that could only exist because of the overlapped printing.
Biscuit / Temptation
Biscuit, Temptation and Biscuit / Temptation were made from two blocks I created when we had our first “open house/open studio” at the Atelier Daumier, cooperative print workshop in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The sun was casting an intriguing shadow and I had it traced onto two mahogany veneer woodblocks pre-prepped with black sumi ink—first the image of me holding aloft the “Biscuit”—french for cookie, in this case a Lorne Doone tea social- and then leaning to succumb to eating the biscuit—Temptation. I left the blocks out during the open house and encouraged visitors to carve outside the silhouette on Biscuit and inside the traced line on Temptation. I carve the silhouette before they began and a few of the lines of the final images and the words into the wood but most lines were done by the enthusiastic visitors over the two day period. I always planned to print them separately as Biscuit and Temptation and to super-impose one over the other to create Biscuit / Temptation and have enjoyed how the center image of the triptych has delightful sections that could only exist because of the overlapped printing.
Detail from The Battle of the Cowshed
The original human farm owner rounds up some neighboring farmers to try to retake the farm. The animals wait silently in hiding and then emerge in a coordinated ambush to thwart the farmers’ invasion, sending them all sprawling and scampering back down the lane.
Woodcut print inspired by Animal Farm by George Orwell.
30” x 50”, seichosen kozo paper, hand spoon printed.
Tray Sophistique
This piece was made for In: Fusion, a North American-Korean Crossroad Exhibition. Twelve artists who had gone to Cranbrook for grad school were invited by classmate Carole Kim to each make an edition of thirty for a shared travelling portfolio. The content should reflect the transition of Korea from a largely rural nation to a highly urbanized and industrial nation in 3 short decades up till 1992. All the artists had been in the MFA printmaking or painting programs but some chose to make 30 exact sculptures.
Each artist would get a set of the works inside a vintage suitcase with decals representing the “golden age of travel”. This screen print represents what items I would like have at the ready to pull out of said suitcase if I were travel on an luxury ocean liner during that era. And to reflecting the content shift in Korea and the crossroad nature of the two cultures—I depict two types of trays—silver sitting on lacquer- to represent east and west. Printed to then be installed via “fold here” tabs.
The Battle of the Cowshed
The original human farm owner rounds up some neighboring farmers to try to retake the farm. The animals wait silently in hiding and then emerge in a coordinated ambush to thwart the farmers’ invasion, sending them all sprawling and scampering back down the lane.
Woodcut print inspired by Animal Farm by George Orwell.
30” x 50”, seichosen kozo paper, hand spoon printed.
Napoleon Signals the Purge
Two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, vie for leadership of the farm. A town-hall debate before all the animals is held to decide whether or not to build a windmill. Snowball makes a logical impassioned speech detailing why the windmill will reduce the workload of all the animals. Napoleon, sensing the crowd is lost to his position, makes a noise in his throat and his 9 attack wolfhounds spring from behind the podium and chase Snowball through a hole in the fence and he is never seen again. Now only one leader.
Woodcut print inspired by Animal Farm by George Orwell.
30” x 50”, seichosen kozo paper, hand spoon printed.
