Clara Gee Stamaty with a display of her paintings, including Three Chairs for the Red, White, and Blue, which she painted in the late 1970s.
Photos by Jill Huber
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February 3, 2009
Artist Clara Gee Stamaty is planning a wonderful present — for herself — as she approaches a milestone birthday.
The Elberon resident is now assembling 50 to 100 pieces for an exhibit of her work at the Gallery on Grant at the Ruth Hyman JCC in Deal; an artist’s reception is set for May 17, two days after her 90th birthday. She has lost track of the exact number of times she has exhibited but estimates that the May show will push the number into the hundreds, including five or six previously at the JCC.
“The show will be a retrospective, and choosing the pieces to display has evoked a lot of memories,” said Stamaty, who began painting when she was a girl in Piqua, Ohio. “All of my work springs from my life and interests, and when I look at something I created in the 1950s, I remember what the world was like back then.”
Stamaty, who works from a studio in her home, was born 30 miles north of Dayton to Dina and Sam Kastner, Russian-immigrant parents who became part of the early Reform movement and a small, progressive Jewish community.
“My parents were crazy about each other,” Stamaty said. “They wanted to fit in and be real Americans. They always asked me to correct their English — they wanted to be part of American society.”
And they had a recipe for a good marriage, she recalled.
“My father used to say that when my mother said ‘oy,’ it hurt him,” Stamaty said. “He always said that’s what made their marriage work. My family was the perfect example of Jewish behavior in a town of 18,000 with no other Jews living in it. People thought everything we did was a reflection on every Jew in the world.”
The artist’s collection of hand-painted rocks, which she gathers from area beaches
In Your Light, Do We See Light by Clara Gee Stamaty
Stamaty applied for admission to an area art school, requested a Jewish roommate, and was told by school officials that Jewish students were not encouraged to join the student body. Instead, she attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where she met fellow student Stanley Stamaty, who became a noted syndicated cartoonist. They were married for 38 years, until his death in 1979. Their son, Mark Alan Stamaty, is an illustrator and cartoonist who lives in New York City.
“Stanley had a great sense of humor, which was perfect for a cartoonist,” she said. “We worked on a lot of cartoon projects together, and we complemented one another. Our minds just worked together.”
‘Strong social conscience’
In addition to collaborating on projects with her husband — she often developed the topics and wrote the text that accompanied many of their political and social cartoons — Stamaty continued to create her own style. She began to paint in oils and watercolors on wood and canvas and create ink drawings and crayon etchings. She used Japanese art forms and the gouache style, an opaque watercolor media, and made relief prints and two-color linoleum block prints. She combined pop art, op art, and collages in works that reflect life in America.
Her work has been displayed all over the world, has appeared in dozens of publications — including Ladies Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times, and Collier’s — and has been purchased by private collectors.
Much of her work shows elements of humor and the social condition, and her artistic inspiration stems from a strong social conscience, Stamaty said. She and her current husband, Milton Ziment, a retired electrical engineer whom she married in 1984, are members of the social action committee at Temple Beth Miriam in Elberon and the Monmouth Center for World Religions and Ethical Thought.
“I like to include humor in my work,” said Stamaty. “It’s important to laugh, especially now. But peace and humanity are always reflected in my projects. They have been driving forces all my life.”
In 1950, the family had moved to Monmouth County, where she became a charter member of the Guild of Creative Arts in Shrewsbury. Stamaty also began to study Hebrew and Jewish mysticism, and the result was a dozen paintings that incorporate Hebrew phrases from the Psalms into her pictures.
“I try to bring people together through my work,” she said. “We’re all connected and feel each other’s pain. We have to care; it’s the only way the world will survive. I hope my work shows elements of care and understanding; I want it to mean something.”
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