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All in the family:
By Christine M. Quirk
Alan Kattelle in his home on Hudson's Lake Boon, with some of the art he created in the back yard.
GateHouse News Service
Wed Aug 01, 2007, 05:22 PM EDT
Hudson -
The house on Lake Boon is surrounded by beauty and nature. Flowers grow high in the front lawn. Chipmunks scatter as visitors approach the walk. The backyard boasts a water view. Inside, the front room is painted in murals more than 70 years old and art is visible everywhere — a portrait of the lady of the house above the stairway, hand-hooked antique rugs on the floor and mounted metal structures on the walls.
This is the home of sculptor Alan Kattelle.
Kattelle’s sculptures and his mother’s paintings are on exhibit at the Hudson Town Hall through mid-September. It’s the first two-person show in the “Art in the Hall” series, which is organized by the Arts Alliance in collaboration with the town of Hudson.
Artist Laurie Kattelle, who died in 1986 at the age of 101, was a fashion illustrator who also did portraits of friends and illustrated children’s books. In fact, when the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped in 1932, Laurie provided a sketch of the infant for the Boston Globe. Later in life, she painted scenes for the Stow Centennial poster. At home, her skills included rug hooking and wood design — she and her husband built their own bed for the master bedroom.
“I admired Mother’s talents,” Kattelle, 88, said. “She was skilled in so many elements – pastels, watercolors, etchings and some sculptures.”
Kattelle studied engineering at Columbia University but it is his sculptures which have won him accolades: first prize in the 1967 Darien Art Show, the Hudson Library Purchase Prize in 1968 and first prize in the 2002 Arts Alliance Member Juried Arts Exhibit.
“I like to tell people that Dad was an engineer and Mother was an artist and I had tendencies both ways,” Kattelle said. “I don’t know how much such characteristics are inherited, but certainly the opportunities were there.”
An eye for metal
Kattelle married his wife Natalie in 1941 and shortly after the couple moved to Connecticut, he discovered a scrap metal yard near his Darien home.
“Since it there was aerotech industry [in the area], there were some fascinating scrap pieces,” Kattelle said. “On weekends I’d browse and bring home stuff that looked interesting.”
Kattelle had a fireproof basement workshop with a large table and he used that to create his one-of-a-kind pieces. He was such a fixture at the metal yard the owner finally asked what he was doing, and Kattelle explained his sculptures.
“He said, ‘Will you make me one? We’ll put it in the entrance,’” Kattelle recalled. “So I did. I have no idea if that yard is still in existence.”
Kattelle learned welding one summer when he worked in a foundry, but most of his sculpture pieces are done using brazing, a method by which two separate pieces are joined by melting a copper alloy between them.
“When it solidifies, it make a marvelous joint,” Kattelle said.
On the shores of Lake Boon
Kattelle returned to the lake after taking early retirement in 1979; he is the third generation to live there. His father’s family rented a summer cottage every year and Kattelle’s father, Laurence, once had a job ferrying residents across the water.
After Kattelle’s parents were engaged, they looked for a more secluded spot to call their own. They found a peninsula in “The Stumps” section of the lake, where, in 1918, there were almost no houses.
“The sun rose on one side and set on the other,” Kattelle said. “They bought the house from a man with the marvelous name of August May. For $2,200, they bought this 18-acre farm —and the horse, too. The first thing they did was sell the horse.”
Eventually, two of Kattelle’s aunts also had homes built on the peninsula. The home Kattelle lives in originally belonged to his aunt Elsie Chamberlin.
Chamberlin had the house built as a summer place and one of her acquaintances, Claggett Wilson, a well-respected artist and designer, planned and painted murals on the living room walls. Wilson conceived a similar design for Ten Chimneys, the Wisconsin retreat of Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt.
Most of the paintings, completed in the summer of 1936, are still there. Two panels featured what Kattelle referred to as “unclothed women” — during a time which the family rented the house, a tenant, perhaps affronted by the nudity, painted them over.
Surrounded by such inspiration, Kattelle said he doesn’t remember a defining moment where he decided to create art — “I suppose I must have seen something similar and thought, ‘Heck, I can do that,’” he said — but now it’s ingrained in his life. There are sculptures in his yard, including a bright blue spiral staircase in the back of the house. A collection of CDs are set in a shadowbox on the porch; when the light hits it right, it makes prisms of rainbows. A silver balloon sits on a nearby chair; it’s the liner from a box of wine, and Kattelle said he’s sure he can make something out of it.
And sometimes, the pieces create themselves. Above the stove in the kitchen is a framed piece called “Old Master Dot Com,” made of strategically placed metal bars and paper dots.
“I had a beautiful frame,” Kattelle explained. “I had to put something in it.”
The art of Laurie and Alan Kattelle is on display at the Hudson Town Hall, 78 Main St., Hudson, through mid-September. Christine M. Quirk can be reached at mothertown@cnc.com.
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