‘Vibrant ambiguity’: Artist Dari Calamari is all about trusting the process

On the side of a South Mint Street building, amoeba-like forms in bright yellows, oranges, blues and greens intermix on the brick canvas. Is that an eyeball? A fish blowing bubbles? Who knows? And that’s the point.

“Heat Waves Can Be Deadly,” painted in 2019 by Dari Calamari, is just one product of the artist’s free spirit.

“I don’t plan anything, I just wing it,” she said. “I hoped it would be a vibrant, colorful piece of ambiguity. I wanted people to look at it and think, ‘This is something I haven’t seen before.’”

Watch for Calamari winging it more in the future. After a decade of experiences in other cities and countries, her return home to Charlotte allowed her to achieve her dream of painting murals and she’s now putting her stamp on her hometown — including by painting the ‘R’ in the Black Lives Matter mural on Tryon Street uptown.

Born in Jacksonville, N.C., Calamari, 35, grew up in east Charlotte, eventually moving to Mint Hill with her mother and stepfather. Her father served in the Navy at Camp Lejeune. Siblings and cousins and her grandfather came and went.

Though she moved a lot, art was a constant. When she was young, her parents provided her with art sets and sketchbooks. She attended Butler High School in Matthews and started doodling to keep from dozing off.

“I really just started drawing to keep me awake in school and in church,” she said. “I didn’t think I was an artist. I didn’t know anyone who was an artist. I just always liked making art.”

In those years, she was drawn to the “Magic Eye” 3D-poster craze and the work of Dutch artist M.C. Escher, known for mathematically influenced art exploring symmetry, reflection and perception.

“I like illusions and changes in perception,” she said. “Landscapes, cityscapes, dogs—they always bored me. I’m interested in seeing things that I’ve never seen before and things that make my eyes be an active participant in what I’m looking at.”

Many of her murals, and works on wood and canvas, reflect that style, as well as those of optical art notables Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely.

Flowing with the current

Calamari, or squid, is borrowed into English from the Italian, which comes from medieval Latin calamarium, or pen case, and the Greek kalamos, or pen, with reference to a squid’s long, tapering internal shell and its ink.

As her name might suggest, Calamari has always just gone with the flow.

In 2005, she began studying art at UNC Charlotte, where she graduated with a concentration in education.

She began teaching at South Mecklenburg High School in 2010, then subbed for a month in a middle school. For a semester, at 22 years old, she taught 9th to 12 graders at Hough High School.

“I felt under-equipped and inadequate,” she said. She was only a little older than her students. After a semester of classroom rigidity — the lesson planning, structure, grading — she changed course and took on a part-time job as a hostess for kids’ parties and an after school teacher.

“I’ve always been around kids,” she said, “my little cousins, and friends in the neighborhood. I used to babysit a lot.”

Then she joined the military.

“I made a list of pros and cons, and knew it would buy me some time to figure out something else — four years of someone else telling me what to do and being paid,” she said.

But Calamari didn’t want to go the same route as her father or sister, both in the Navy, and always loved planes and the concept of flight, so she walked into an Air Force recruiting office on the south side and got a job.

“I had never had a desk job, and it sucked a little bit of my soul,” she said. Still, while stationed in Augusta, Georgia, as an intelligence analyst, art called her back. “I started bringing my sketch pads and pens, and sitting there, trying to stay awake, I got back into drawing.”

Calamari was Alaska-bound when, on a whim, she offered to switch places with another Air Force recruit and stay behind in Georgia.

“Curiosity drives everything,” she said. “Whatever mistakes and accidents happen, I’m very adaptable.”

Art on purpose

In 2016, she moved to Richmond, Virginia, and, in order to get out of the military early, applied to Virginia Commonwealth University, where she studied Spanish, African-American Studies, and Gender and Sexuality for a year.

In Richmond, she was exposed to street art and attended mural festivals and started meeting people like muralist and fine artist Wingchow.

Eventually, Calamari had created enough work to join a RAW artists art show, where she encountered muralist Sir James Thornhill, who asked her to help him with one of his murals.

During these years, she also spent time traveling. “I thought I was going to do that in the military,” she said. She visited friends in Colorado, Jamaica, Germany, Austria and Brazil.

“I was figuring myself out; I wasn’t really making art on purpose [before that],” she said.

Home, on a mission

With a newfound urge to paint a wall herself, in 2018, she moved back to Charlotte.

After Googling, “murals in Charlotte,” she read about a project by artist Georgie Nakima and others going up in NoDa, and jumped in her car to check it out.

“I was on the wrong street, when I passed a guy painting a mural,” she said. It was artist Nick Napoletano, who reviewed her work and linked her up with another artist, Owl.

“That’s how I found everybody else,” she said. She eventually connected with muralist and co-founder of Brand the Moth, Sam Guzzie, and began a mural residency. The Mint Street mural is a product of that project.

In 2019, she moved her work into a shared studio space at C3, where she stayed for a year, meeting other artists, observing their processes and creating her own work.

Next, the current is moving her into fashion, designing leggings and hoodies. “My goal was to come to Charlotte to paint a mural, and I did that,” she said.

When it comes to how she’s going to make her mark in fashion, Calamari’s not as clear yet. She’s just going to wing it.

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