The Rural We: Nadine Kalachnikoff
Inspired by the beauty of a butterfly on a particularly bad day, Kalachnikoff began creating butterfly collages.
The Judy Black Memorial Park and Gardens in Washington Depot, Connecticut is the perfect place to showcase the Nadine Kalachnikoff Art Exhibition; the butterflies on her canvases appear ready to take flight into the garden. Though not a trained artist, Kalachnikoff has always been surrounded by talented artists. Born in Paris to a Russian emigree father and a Spanish mother, she lived in a world where friends included Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Roy Halston, Ernest Hemingway, Ava Gardner, Marlon Brando and other A-listers. (As an example of her parents’ influence, she and her family used to go bullfights with Hemingway and Ava Gardner. Kalachnikoff asked the author to help her with a book report she was working on. Hemingway actually wrote her report on “The Old Man and the Sea.” Her grade: a D minus. “I couldn’t tell them that Ernest Hemingway wrote my report!” she says.) She and her husband, the prominent designer Lars Bolander, had a shop and studio in Palm Beach, but several years ago moved to Roxbury. Kalachnikoff’s collection of three-dimensional butterfly collages will be on view in Washington Depot through May 21.
We have friends in this area who convinced us to move up here, and we did mostly so we could be closer to our sons — one runs a Lars Bolander shop in Westport and the other owns a restaurant in Queens. Our home in Roxbury has 40 acres, which we thought our grandchildren would enjoy, but the house really is too big for us.
I’ve been doing the butterfly canvases for about six years. I was inspired after a particular day at our store in Palm Beach. There was a customer who really angered me and I left very upset. I was in our pool and saw a butterfly, and appealed to my late mother and father to give me something else to do other than going to the store and dealing with people. Lars came home — he was designing the interior of a restaurant in Palm Beach — and said he needed something for the wall. I remembered I had a canvas in the garage, pulled it out, and just started creating the butterflies. They’re made out of bird feathers from China and papyrus. I have to work with them — I paint and mold them. The collages sold incredibly in Palm Beach. I couldn’t believe it. But they are happy, something nice to look at.
The people here are so kind. Nobody knew us, but everybody you talk to, from the Big Y to the person cleaning your car, is so nice. I love that about Connecticut.
