At 83, this famous Sacramento artist is still crafting exhibits and launching collaborations

Stephen Kaltenbach doesn’t have to be doing this.

The 83-year-old Kaltenbach, an artist who lives in Davis, is known for works like his 1972-79 painting “Portrait of My Father” that hangs in Crocker Art Museum. He did a 2005 sculpture of shaking hands, “Peace” near Capitol Mall and a 1999 sculpture, “Time to Cast Away Stones” at 13th and K streets in Sacramento.

That’s the kind of work that’s made Kaltenbach a name in the art world dating to the 1960s, creating conceptual, minimalist and other work upon which he could rest his legacy. But that hasn’t stopped Kaltenbach from taking part in some recent exhibitions.

For an exhibit closing Sept. 17 at Verge Center for the Arts near Southside Park, wooden furniture has bowed and staff has kept N-95 masks on hand because books are starting to mold for “What Death Does,” a living room installation Kaltenbach created and previously showed in New York. This is because Kaltenbach has had water continuously raining on the living room since it opened in June.

Beyond this, the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis hosted an opening reception on Sept. 2 for “Stephen Kaltenbach: Alchemy of Space and Place.” The first floor includes sketches Kaltenbach did in the 1960s and an installation, “Inverted Pyramid Room.” The third floor features a collaborative project with a newer artist, Seongmin Yoo of Davis.

These are just the latest offerings from Kaltenbach, an artist who’s made something of a habit of never quite doing what the public or art world might expect.

Background on Kaltenbach

This isn’t the first time Kaltenbach has gone his own direction as an artist.

Originally from Michigan, Kaltenbach studied art at University of California, Davis in the 1960s where his professors included Wayne Thiebaud. After college, Kaltenbach made his way to New York City where his clients included celebrated Pop artist Andy Warhol. Kaltenbach also developed what he called his protocol of opposites.

“I’d listen in on conversations in artists’ bars… and hear what they were interested in, then try to think, ‘What would the opposite of that be?’” Kaltenbach said.

At one point, Kaltenbach overheard artists discussing what made good art. He got to thinking what constituted bad art. Over a month, he said, he created nine deliberately poor works, under a pseudonym, Es Que for a series, “Bad Painting.” At the end, he took the paintings to Lord & Taylor, a furniture store, where he proposed a show, which was declined.

The Verge’s exhibition includes one painting from this series, a portrait of a woman done with flat, uninspired coloring.

Kaltenbach returned to the capital region in 1970, beginning to teach at Sacramento State. The school, which he taught at until 2005, will feature an exhibition of his works, “Stephen Kaltenbach: Teach Art” next Feb. 6 to May 18. Kelly Lindner, the university’s art galleries and collections curator said Kaltenbach will give an artist talk as part of the exhibition.

“You never know what the personalities of artists are going to be,” Lindner said. “But he’s definitely approachable and readily talks about his work and how he sees it fitting in.”

Once back in California after his time in New York City, Kaltenbach also recast himself as a humble, regional artist.

“Steve is one of those people that I think Sacramento is really good at housing, for lack of a better way of putting it,” said Liv Moe, Verge’s founding director. “Outside of this region, Steve is very famous… It’s just that Sacramento, the only thing that anybody in Sacramento knows about Steve is really ‘Portrait of My Father’ and the public art that he’s done.”

Even at the Natsoulas opening, multiple attendees arrived having seen Kaltenbach’s work before without knowing it.

Stephanie Smith, an art classmate of Yoo’s at Sacramento City College, had seen Kaltenbach’s rainy living room at the Verge but not known it was his work until a reporter told her. Davis resident Jeff Mayor only realized when he read a Natsoulas info card on Kaltenbach that the artist had also created “Room Cube” which Mayor saw at UC Davis’s Manetti Shrem Museum.

Others at the Natsoulas opening had more long-term associations with Kaltenbach, such as Steven Muzylowski, a Sacramento resident who studied sculpture under the artist at CSUS in the 1980s. Muzylowski’s studies included a field trip to the Woodland-area barn Kaltenbach lived in for a time during the years he was painting “Portrait of My Father.”

“He was a very good teacher,” Muzylowski said. “He was very patient and calm with us and answered every question we had.”

Another side of Kaltenbach’s work could be religious faith which wasn’t ostentatiously on display during Kaltenbach’s interview with the Sacramento Bee but is evident among those who know him well.

“A lot of his paintings are actually religiously-based,” said David Stone, who represents Kaltenbach through his online gallery, Another Year in LA. “They’re Christian paintings, not just paintings. So he’s constantly challenging people.”

Working with Yoo

During a group interview at the Natsoulas center with Yoo and Sarah Poisner, the gallery’s director of exhibitions, Kaltenbach expounded on his career and listened while others spoke. When conversation at one point focused on haiku – Yoo’s mother is published for this type of poetry – Kaltenbach offered that he was a “haiku freak.”

Francesca Wilmott, a Crocker curator who wrote a chapter of her doctoral thesis about Kaltenbach, described him as “one of the warmest people that you’ll ever meet,” as well as dry, funny and highly intelligent. “He can be enigmatic at times, but always really sharp and thinking outside the box,” Wilmott said.

The collaboration with Yoo at the Natsoulas, a jutting of fabrics from a central box, came about for more than one reason. Kaltenbach has known gallery owner John Natsoulas for roughly 40 years. And Natsoulas and Yoo each had children who were members of Davis High School Orchestra’s Baroque Ensemble.

After Kaltenbach’s show was scheduled for the first floor, Natsoulas told the artist he’d be working with Yoo on the third floor installation.

“He can be pushy which is one of his best qualities because it’s helped him to really do more for art and Davis,” Kaltenbach said of Natsoulas.

Yoo told The Bee that she loves to make conceptual work but also wanted to create “something really visually interesting” with the installation. As for Kaltenbach, he deferred to the younger artist for their collaboration, never working alone on it at the gallery.

“I would just come up and we’d discuss what should happen next,” Kaltenbach said. “She would work solidly, it seems like anyway, from the time I left ‘til the time I got back the next day because there’d be all this new stuff. And it was so much fun.”