Print
E-mail
Comment
Rate
Artist, feminist, inspiration and … Nana
Click image to enlarge
   |
Former Clevelander Lynn Kaye’s works to be shown at Dick Kleinman gallery
By Elizabeth Weinstein
Staff Reporter
One of my earliest memories is of a studio on Mercantile Road in Beachwood. It was my grandmother’s art studio, which she shared for 22 years with her friend Bernadine Silberman, a sculptor. It was a cavernous space ,filled, floor-to-ceiling, with larger-than-life, abstract, three-dimensional paintings by my grandmother Lynn Kaye.
I grew up in Columbus, so it was a rare treat to visit Nana Kaye at her studio. Whenever I arrived, she would set up a small easel for me next to her giant easel. Side-by-side, in matching smocks, we’d paint the day away.
As I got older, I stopped painting. But Nana Kaye, now 81, is still going strong. In the art world, she’s an innovator. She was a feminist before feminism was a movement. She broke boundaries, setting grand scale canvases (some nearly 6-feet-tall) on fire with a blowtorch to add texture and depth to her works.
Her paintings have been shown in solo and group exhibitions and in corporate collections in New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, and, of course, Cleveland, where she was a staple at the Beachwood Museum (now the Beachwood Arts Council). In 1981, she was part of a group exhibition at The Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, D.C. There, her painting “De Goulinade Trees” hung next to a painting by Georgia O’Keefe. Once, Nana Kaye was even commissioned to paint a top-secret portrait of a princess for a Saudi Arabian king.
Growing up in Cleveland in the 1920s and ’30s, my grandmother had few doubts about what she wanted to do with her life. She taught herself how to draw at age 5, was cartooning at 7 and painting with oils by 9. She spent Saturday mornings at The Cleveland Museum of Art, taking classes and reproducing her favorite paintings on a sketchpad.
“The museum had told my mother that (I had) a great deal of talent, but she should make sure I had art supplies,” my grandmother recalls. “All I had was a pencil. Those were hard times ... My father had gone through a couple of bankruptcies.” Nana Kaye persisted, though, teaching herself how to work with various tools and materials.
As a student at Cleveland Heights High School in the early-1940s, she was appalled when school administrators would not allow her to take woodworking classes with her male peers – girls were to take home economics, she was told. She rallied her female classmates around her cause and lobbied the school principal, who eventually gave in and allowed her to take wood shop. Not surprisingly, perhaps, she was also the first girl from her high school to start wearing blue jeans, rather than skirts.
“I met your grandmother in the middle of the 1960s. We worked in the same building, and her studio was across the hall from mine,” notes Dick Kleinman, owner of the Dick Kleinman Fine Art Gallery in Woodmere. “She was pretty toasty. I guess they call it ‘hot’ today,” he says with a laugh.
Nana Kaye … a ‘hottie’? It’s a funny image to conjure, but it doesn’t really surprise me.
“She always had a smile on her face,” he adds, “and was always working.”
Nana Kaye painted at her Mercantile Road studio for more than two decades, creating her signature, intense, three-dimensional abstract expressionist landscapes, seascapes, rockscapes and portraits.
“I painted almost every day,” she affirms. “No matter if things were good or bad, tough or busy. Through a marriage, through children, I still painted.”
Her studio was a gathering place for young artists in the 1960s and ’70s. “They used to come in and talk to us,” she explains. “We used to look at their portfolios … There was always something exciting going on – trying something new and learning from each other.”
About 14 years ago, Nana Kaye moved from Ohio to Florida. She now lives in Delray Beach and paints in a room at the back part of her house that has been converted into a studio. But she spends summers in Cleveland and Columbus. Ohio has always been her muse, she insists. “I loved Ohio so much as a child. I loved the elements. That’s what turns me on. Whatever city I am in, I think of Ohio.”
A sampling of her newest works will be on display at her old friend Kleinman’s gallery. These paintings, she says, are a marriage between the abstract techniques she used throughout much of her career and more impressionistic watercolor techniques she’s honed in recent years. They are smaller in scale (approximately 2.5-feet-tall) but packed with geometric shapes and bold colors. “I wanted the paintings to be abstract, but I still wanted the viewer to have a part in the painting,” she says.
“The smell of turpentine, the love of the brushes and canvases – it’s a feeling that you just can’t resist,” she says, with a sigh.
eweinstein@cjn.org
I grew up in Columbus, so it was a rare treat to visit Nana Kaye at her studio. Whenever I arrived, she would set up a small easel for me next to her giant easel. Side-by-side, in matching smocks, we’d paint the day away.
As I got older, I stopped painting. But Nana Kaye, now 81, is still going strong. In the art world, she’s an innovator. She was a feminist before feminism was a movement. She broke boundaries, setting grand scale canvases (some nearly 6-feet-tall) on fire with a blowtorch to add texture and depth to her works.
Her paintings have been shown in solo and group exhibitions and in corporate collections in New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, and, of course, Cleveland, where she was a staple at the Beachwood Museum (now the Beachwood Arts Council). In 1981, she was part of a group exhibition at The Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, D.C. There, her painting “De Goulinade Trees” hung next to a painting by Georgia O’Keefe. Once, Nana Kaye was even commissioned to paint a top-secret portrait of a princess for a Saudi Arabian king.
Growing up in Cleveland in the 1920s and ’30s, my grandmother had few doubts about what she wanted to do with her life. She taught herself how to draw at age 5, was cartooning at 7 and painting with oils by 9. She spent Saturday mornings at The Cleveland Museum of Art, taking classes and reproducing her favorite paintings on a sketchpad.
“The museum had told my mother that (I had) a great deal of talent, but she should make sure I had art supplies,” my grandmother recalls. “All I had was a pencil. Those were hard times ... My father had gone through a couple of bankruptcies.” Nana Kaye persisted, though, teaching herself how to work with various tools and materials.
As a student at Cleveland Heights High School in the early-1940s, she was appalled when school administrators would not allow her to take woodworking classes with her male peers – girls were to take home economics, she was told. She rallied her female classmates around her cause and lobbied the school principal, who eventually gave in and allowed her to take wood shop. Not surprisingly, perhaps, she was also the first girl from her high school to start wearing blue jeans, rather than skirts.
“I met your grandmother in the middle of the 1960s. We worked in the same building, and her studio was across the hall from mine,” notes Dick Kleinman, owner of the Dick Kleinman Fine Art Gallery in Woodmere. “She was pretty toasty. I guess they call it ‘hot’ today,” he says with a laugh.
Nana Kaye … a ‘hottie’? It’s a funny image to conjure, but it doesn’t really surprise me.
“She always had a smile on her face,” he adds, “and was always working.”
Nana Kaye painted at her Mercantile Road studio for more than two decades, creating her signature, intense, three-dimensional abstract expressionist landscapes, seascapes, rockscapes and portraits.
“I painted almost every day,” she affirms. “No matter if things were good or bad, tough or busy. Through a marriage, through children, I still painted.”
Her studio was a gathering place for young artists in the 1960s and ’70s. “They used to come in and talk to us,” she explains. “We used to look at their portfolios … There was always something exciting going on – trying something new and learning from each other.”
About 14 years ago, Nana Kaye moved from Ohio to Florida. She now lives in Delray Beach and paints in a room at the back part of her house that has been converted into a studio. But she spends summers in Cleveland and Columbus. Ohio has always been her muse, she insists. “I loved Ohio so much as a child. I loved the elements. That’s what turns me on. Whatever city I am in, I think of Ohio.”
A sampling of her newest works will be on display at her old friend Kleinman’s gallery. These paintings, she says, are a marriage between the abstract techniques she used throughout much of her career and more impressionistic watercolor techniques she’s honed in recent years. They are smaller in scale (approximately 2.5-feet-tall) but packed with geometric shapes and bold colors. “I wanted the paintings to be abstract, but I still wanted the viewer to have a part in the painting,” she says.
“The smell of turpentine, the love of the brushes and canvases – it’s a feeling that you just can’t resist,” she says, with a sigh.
eweinstein@cjn.org
- What: Paintings by Lynn Kaye
- Where: Dick Kleinman Fine Art Gallery, Eton Chagrin Blvd.
- When: Beginning Feb. 1
- Contact: www.dickkleinmanfineart.com or 216-464-8989
Article Rating
Reader Comments
The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of clevelandjewishnews.com.
You must register with a valid email to post comments. Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments. Registration is free.
Registered users sign in here: |
Become a Registered User |
