From War-Torn To Art Reborn: Kosovo to CT trek sparks gallery
Updated: Sep 26
• Family’s Journey From Kosovo To Connecticut Inspires New Art Gallery
This story first appeared as the July edition cover story in Today Magazine, our monthly publication — click for numerous images of exquisite Kalaveshi artwork
By Bruce William Deckert — Today Magazine • Editor-in-Chief
What do you recall about your 10th birthday? Saranda Kalaveshi has a vivid and cherished 10th-birthday memory — her school in Kosovo honored her with a special solo exhibition featuring her artwork.
On that momentous birthday, what Saranda didn’t know was that nearly a quarter-century later she and her sister and their mom would open an art gallery 4500 miles away in Avon, Connecticut.
Yes, this artistic trio established Kalaveshi Arts Studio/Gallery in November 2023 at the Riverdale Farms plaza in Avon — and eight months later they are hosting their first art show in pursuit of a shared dream. Their desire is to offer an artistic space that inspires community and creativity in Greater Hartford and across Connecticut.
SEO Keyword – War-Torn To Art Reborn: Kosovo
SEO Keyword – War-Torn To Art Reborn: Kosovo
The Small Works Juried Exhibition at Kalaveshi Arts is open until the last Saturday in July. The work of acclaimed Avon-based artist Edith Skiba LaMonica is being showcased at the exhibit, along with many others.
“The Kalaveshi gallery is an inviting exhibition space that offers the Farmington Valley community a new opportunity to see and celebrate the creative artworks of local artists,” says LaMonica, whose work has been featured by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the Canton-based Gallery on the Green. “The variety of paintings, collage and mixed media makes this exhibit an art adventure.”
Saranda points to her solo school art show as a key formative experience — yet her interest in painting had been kindled in her preschool years.
“I started drawing at the age of 3,” she says, depicting animals and cartoon scenes in her artwork — and as her mom recalls, Saranda would “draw with her finger in the air” sometimes when she slept.
“My mother saved all of my drawings from that time, and when she showed them to my teacher years later, he curated a solo exhibit at my elementary school that fell on my 10th birthday in March 1999,” Saranda says. “This was during wartime in Kosovo, but we were still going to school in my town.”
The Kosovo War made international headlines in the late 1990s — and the war backdrop illustrates how birthday memories can cut both ways. When family and friends celebrate via a birthday party, joy can flow like a peaceful river and pleasant memories ensue. However, if a close family member forgets a natal day or neglects to send birthday greetings, the river becomes choppy and the result can be a painful memory.
"I think everyone is born with the ability to create, as it is well-known that it’s extremely therapeutic for the human mind — it’s a form of meditation" — Saranda Kalaveshi • Kalaveshi Arts Gallery
For Saranda and her family and neighbors in Kosovo, the water metaphor is apropos — because the wartime river reached a torrential and dangerous flood stage in February 1998, when the war erupted in earnest.
On Saranda’s 10th birthday in March 1999, of course she didn’t realize Kalaveshi Arts would debut 24 years later in Connecticut — but she also didn’t know what would happen in her home nation in the week that followed her celebratory art show.
“Five days later,” she says, “NATO started a bombing campaign to stop the Serbian genocide in Kosovo, and the schools, like everything else, shut down.”
NATO is the acronym for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a political and military alliance founded in 1949 with 12 member nations — 10 European countries plus the United States and Canada. In 1999, NATO had 19 members. Today, NATO is comprised of 32 nations — 30 from Europe, plus Canada and the U.S.
The decision to bomb the Serbian and Yugoslavian military was NATO’s first intervention without a United Nations mandate. NATO’s bombardment, initiated in late March and aimed at the Serbian forces in Kosovo, signaled the beginning of the end of the conflict. The Kosovo War concluded in June 1999 after 11 weeks of air strikes — so this past June marked the 25th anniversary of the war’s conclusion.
LOST ART PLUS KOSOVO HISTORY
“After the war ended,” Saranda notes, “I went to my elementary school to find out that most of the paintings and cultural artifacts in my school had been destroyed by the Serbian army. Some of those paintings were my interpretations of the war and what was going on around us.”
In 1999, Kosovo was a province in Serbia, and Serbia was one of two republics in Yugoslavia.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have any paintings from that exhibition,” Saranda says, “but I do have photographs of the event, in which some of them are visible.”
Before the Kosovo War, during the Cold War from 1946-91, communist Yugoslavia comprised six republics: Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina — despite the dual name, Bosnia and Herzegovina described only one republic.
SEO Keyword – War-Torn To Art Reborn: Kosovo
SEO Keyword – War-Torn To Art Reborn: Kosovo
Officially known as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the nation encompassed about 98,700 square miles and espoused communism for those 45 years, but was distinct from the Soviet Union.
By comparison, New England encompasses almost 72,000 square miles and also includes six political units — the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.
Saranda was born in 1989, the same year the Berlin Wall was dismantled and the Cold War began to thaw. Her sister Njomza was born in 1987, and their mother Drita’s birth year is 1965.
In tandem with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, communism in Yugoslavia likewise collapsed. In 1991 and 1992, four of Yugoslavia’s republics declared their independence as separate countries — Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina — leaving only Montenegro and Serbia (including Kosovo) in a diminished and rebranded Yugoslavia.
The resulting federal turmoil led to the Bosnian War from 1992-95 and later to the Kosovo War in 1998-99.
In 1974, Yugoslavia’s constitution had granted Kosovo autonomous status, essentially giving the province the privilege of self-government — separate from the Serbia republic — to acknowledge the distinct interests of Kosovo’s Albanians. While Serbians and Albanians were side-by-side citizens in communist Yugoslavia, ethnic differences and grievances evidently simmered for decades and, indeed, centuries.
"Whether a painting turns out to be display-worthy is of secondary importance — what truly matters is the self-discovery gained throughout the creative journey" — Saranda Kalaveshi
In 1989, changes to the constitution fundamentally eliminated the provincial autonomy Kosovo had enjoyed. Concurrent draconian measures put tens of thousands of Kosovo’s Albanians out of work, restricted their cultural organizations, replaced Albanian officials with Serbians, and closed Albanian-language schools.
In response, many of Kosovo’s Albanians boycotted Serbian institutions via a peaceful protest, and Albanian citizens in Kosovo established their own alternative shadow government — without any real political clout. Nevertheless, these countermeasures failed to obtain the support of the international community.
Saranda’s family has an Albanian heritage — and was therefore part of the specific population of Yugoslavian civilians targeted by Serbian aggression and persecution and retaliation during the late 1990s.
Saranda and Njomza were born in Gjakova, a city in western Kosovo near the border of the neighboring nation of Albania.
In 1991, when they were preschool age, Drita and the girls moved to Albania. They returned to Kosovo in 1995, to the city of Gjilan, where the sisters spent the rest of their growing-up years — including the two war years that closed out the 20th century.
HOMETOWN WAR STORIES
The NATO bombardment hit Gjakova hard on March 24, 1999 — the first day of the air strikes targeting Serbian forces. The bombing was welcomed as friendly fire by Gjakova residents, yet Serbian retribution swiftly followed.
Serbian soldiers burned down a distinguished neighborhood at the heart of the city. Some citizens who attempted to extinguish the fire became early victims of the NATO campaign, murdered by Serbian troops.
During the two-year war about 1800 Gjakova residents were killed and 6,500 houses in the city were destroyed. The overall death toll from the Kosovo War has been estimated at more than 18,000 along with roughly 4000 people who disappeared.
SEO Keyword – War-Torn To Art Reborn: Kosovo
SEO Keyword – War-Torn To Art Reborn: Kosovo
Universal agreement on the numbers is elusive, yet one estimate is that Kosovo’s Albanian civilians suffered 10,000 deaths via horrific mass murders, and many were buried in hundreds of mass grave sites in Kosovo and Serbia.
The refugee crisis was also shocking and far-reaching. An estimated 1.5 million Kosovo Albanians were forcibly expelled from their homes — roughly 90 percent of the Albanian population of Kosovo in 1998. Thousands of houses were then looted and burned.
“Luckily, no family member of ours was murdered during the war,” Saranda says, “but my mother’s cousins were forced to take their belongings and leave their houses and everything they owned from a town only a few miles from Gjilan called Përlepnicë. The entire village was forced out and many houses were burned to the ground, including our cousins’ house.”
Some nearby friends suffered worse fates. A close neighbor was shot when he walked out of his house — “but he survived,” Saranda reports. Singer Haki Misini, the frontman of the popular Kosovo rock band MAK for nearly three decades, was a friend of Drita and her brother.
“A very well-known musician of the time, [he] was kidnapped by the Serbian forces only hours before the war ended,” Saranda says. “His remains were found five years later.”
Numerous historians describe the atrocities committed in Kosovo in the late 1990s as both a genocide and ethnic cleansing — the latter refers to a government’s goal of eradicating and eliminating people from another racial group via deportation, displacement and/or mass killing in order to establish an ethnically uniform population.
Genocides and ethnic cleansing are widely considered war crimes.
While racially incited and religiously inspired cleansing campaigns have occurred throughout human history, according to History.com, “the rise of extreme nationalist movements during the 20th century led to an unprecedented level of ethnically motivated brutality, including the Turkish massacre of Armenians during World War 1, the Nazi annihilation of some 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust, and the forced displacement and mass killings carried out in the former Yugoslavia and the African country of Rwanda during the 1990s.”
"It is easy to question whether your art is any good and to be too self-critical in this field, and I think that finding the right audience for your style of art can be challenging — it’s always a work-in-progress" — Saranda Kalaveshi
As the new millennium began, tension between Albanians and Serbians continued. The two-republic Yugoslavia dissolved in February 2003, rebranding as the nation of Serbia and Montenegro, and in 2006 Serbia and Montenegro divided and became two separate nations.
Finally, in February 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia.
The United States and many other influential members of the United Nations immediately recognized Kosovo as a sovereign nation, but China, Russia and Serbia did not and have maintained that stance. Today, 115 of 192 UN members officially recognize Kosovo, including 22 of the 27 European Union countries — but Kosovo has not yet been admitted into the United Nations.
By the way, Saranda’s and Njomza’s Kalaveshi surname is “an Albanian last name that isn’t very common,” says Saranda. “It translates roughly to a ‘bunch’ — for example, a bunch of grapes … there is no literal translation to English.”
More specifically, the Kalaveshi surname comes from Drita’s marriage to Saranda’s and Njomza’s father. Drita and their father parted ways when Saranda was an infant, and she has no memories of him.
Meanwhile, Drita’s parents were pivotal components of the girls’ growing-up years in Kosovo. Saranda says their grandfather, Rauf Ismaili, was a stable and present father figure for her and Njomza. Their grandmother Fatime likewise provided a loving and reliable presence.
The two sisters have no other siblings, but they were essentially raised together with four cousins. Drita has two older brothers — she is the youngest, and her next-oldest brother has four children: three girls and a boy.
“We’re very close,” Saranda notes. “We’re basically siblings.”
ARTISTIC JOURNEY
The Kalaveshi Arts Studio/Gallery is the culmination of a creative multi-continent journey.
In 2010, Saranda moved from Kosovo to the United States as an international student to study acting. She graduated from the University of New Mexico with a bachelor’s degree in theatre and then attained a Master of Fine Arts (aka MFA) in acting from the University of Florida. Throughout this time, she performed in numerous theatre productions and appeared in a few movies that were filmed in New Mexico and Los Angeles.
Saranda’s love of the stage took center stage from 2010 to 2020, yet she continued to paint and exhibit her artwork when possible.
SEO Keyword – War-Torn To Art Reborn: Kosovo
SEO Keyword – War-Torn To Art Reborn: Kosovo
Going back to her childhood, in addition to the recognition of her solo art show, she won first-place awards in art competitions for three consecutive years in Gjilan and received a third-place award in a Kosovo-wide competition. She also displayed musical talent and became a classically trained pianist as she attended Prenk Jakova Classical Music High School in Gjilan.
When her school art exhibit occurred, pursuing art as a career and opening an art gallery weren’t even remotely on Saranda’s radar.
“When my teacher opened the solo exhibit on my 10th birthday,” she says, “I had no ambition for anything at all. I was just a kid — in fact, quite confused that I was being celebrated. … I didn’t think [my paintings] were special enough to be seen and celebrated by others. I was, however, very excited that it was my birthday — that was the really exciting part for me. Only years later did I realize the significance of the day.”
Let’s fast-forward to the significance of the COVID pandemic in 2020, when Saranda shifted gears career-wise and her artist’s calling came into focus.
When COVID hit in March 2020, Saranda and her husband Nathan Coleman were living in New York City — they had married in 2014 after meeting at the University of New Mexico. To escape the COVID fallout in New York, they moved back to New Mexico to live with Saranda’s mother in Rio Rancho.
Drita had moved to New Mexico in 2012 when Saranda was a student. During what was intended to be a short-term visit with her daughter, Drita learned about an employment opportunity at UNM’s University Libraries, applied and landed the job, and settled in Albuquerque.
In 2020 her home became a pandemic refuge for Saranda and Nathan. Four months earlier, in November 2019, Njomza had relocated from Kosovo with her then-4-year-old daughter, joining Drita in New Mexico.
So the pandemic resulted in a family reunion in the U.S. Southwest.
Given the downtime of the COVID quarantine, Saranda returned to her artistic roots and produced dozens of paintings, and Njomza followed suit. Meanwhile, Drita was painting and producing pottery after taking classes that resurrected her long-dormant artistic talent — she also studied printmaking. She took these classes in conjunction with the degree she received from the University of New Mexico in 2017.
"It gives me great satisfaction each and every time I create something that I initially found challenging, as I surprise myself and realize that I am capable of much more than I might tell myself I am" — Saranda Kalaveshi
Yes, Drita leveraged her academic opportunity as a UNM employee and earned a bachelor’s in liberal arts and integrative studies — with a unique concentration in ceramics for people with special needs, echoing her previous collegiate program. Before her girls were born, she attended the University of Zagreb in Croatia and focused on disability studies, with a specialty in helping children with speech impairment.
So she became the third family member with a UNM degree. Whenever and wherever this mother and her daughter and son-in-law gather, they can celebrate a mini-University of New Mexico homecoming.
Drita excelled at art in her youth but pursued various entrepreneurial business ventures to provide income for her family. To describe her resumé as a resounding eclectic success is a dramatic understatement — her successful Kosovo businesses have included a shoe company, a restaurant, a cosmetics store and a construction company.
“My Mom is amazing,” Saranda says. “A magazine could write an entire article just about her and her life experiences — actually, it would probably take an entire book!”
Up until 2019, Njomza had stayed in Kosovo. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in acting from the University of Prishtina, and in 2008 she took a job with the theater in Gjilan, where she worked as an actress in a variety of roles until making the move to the U.S.
The trio’s artistic flurry during the pandemic led to a website that showcases their work, launched in 2021 — kalaveshiarts.com — plus exhibits at several galleries and art festivals in New Mexico.
“The idea for our gallery came after we’d been consistently painting during COVID,” Saranda explains, “as that was the time we were reunited and living together in New Mexico after more than 10 years apart.”
In July 2022, Nathan and Saranda moved to Connecticut after he was accepted in the clinical psychology doctoral program at the University of Hartford. They settled in Greater Hartford, and Drita and Njomza moved to the Farmington Valley at the same time.
“When we moved to Connecticut, we knew that we wanted to continue creating,” Saranda says. “We needed a studio space for that. When we found the space at Riverdale Farms, we realized this could be a gallery where we can showcase what we’re creating and create opportunities for other local artists to show their work as well.”
A VISION OF HEALING
The word is spreading in Greater Hartford about the Kalaveshi Arts Studio/Gallery.
“The response from the local community has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Nathan. “Kalaveshi Arts appears to really be making a name for itself as a centralized source of high-quality artwork and commissions within the Farmington River Valley, and it will be very interesting to see where all of these paths connect down the road.”
Nathan has a bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico and a master’s in forensic psychology from John Jay College in Manhattan.
SEO Keyword – War-Torn To Art Reborn: Kosovo
SEO Keyword – War-Torn To Art Reborn: Kosovo
Asked what impresses him most about his wife’s creative work connected to the gallery, he says: “Often, it’s simply her most recent work that catches my attention — Saranda has an amazing eye for fine details and, combined with her work ethic, she’s just such an artistic juggernaut.”
The Small Works Juried Exhibition, curated by prominent West Hartford artist Carol Ganick, highlights the imaginative output of 25 artists.
“In addition to showing their own work, the Kalaveshi gallery is supporting and promoting the arts in the community,” says Edith LaMonica. “The current gallery exhibition is their first juried exhibit of art by local artists.”
Besides the display at their Avon location, the Kalaveshi Arts trio has shown their artwork locally at the West Hartford Art League and at Duncaster, a senior and assisted living community in Bloomfield.
“The artworks created by gallery owners Drita, Njomza and Saranda echo with memories of their shared culture and life experiences,” says LaMonica, who has taught art at Rutgers University in New Jersey, the Avon-based Farmington Valley Arts Center, and the New Britain Museum of American Art.
“However, each artist coveys her own vision. Their works are unique to each in subject, style, process and materials, including fabrics and beads. Combining art history with cultural images, they create thought-provoking contemporary portraits.”
After experiencing such a difficult and painful cultural history in war-torn Kosovo, this sister-sister-mother trio is aiming to leverage art as a vehicle for healing. The vision of Kalaveshi Arts expresses the shared human vision of citizens in Connecticut, Kosovo and everywhere in-between — a simple heartfelt longing for the fulfillment of our hopes and dreams for a peaceful and meaningful resolution of life’s many conflicts.
“My Mom is amazing — a magazine could write an entire article just about her and her life experiences — actually, it would probably take an entire book!”
Indeed, the visual and musical arts are time-honored ways to soothe troubled hearts and minds and to mend emotional and psychological wounds.
In this light, while the career callings of Nathan and Saranda may appear to be quite different, they actually go hand in hand. His profession is based on the science of psychology, while hers focuses on the creativity of art. Yet art and science as well as math and music surely interweave and overlap — academic gurus and novices alike universally acknowledge the truth of this notion.
Further, the goals of the arts and sciences are essentially identical — to help the human community seek, find and discern truth and beauty while discovering solutions for the hurts and hopes of citizens of every nation across human history.
The bio page on the Kalaveshi Arts website contains the following statement: “Saranda’s goal always has been, and remains, to inspire, educate and entertain others through the diverse interactions between the performing and visual arts, and to this end she remains steadfast in her pursuits of artistic knowledge and revelation.”
Let’s return to the true tale of a 10-year-old girl in Kosovo growing up in the midst of a bloody struggle as a front-row witness to one of the most tragic wars of the 20th century.
“If someone had told me at 10 years old that 24 years later we’d have an art gallery in the United States, I would not have believed them,” Saranda says. “It was almost impossible for us to leave Kosovo, and to move to the United States was only a dream.”
Perhaps the expression of the Kalaveshi Arts vision can be reprised in a four-word phrase — from war-torn to reborn. +
Today editor-in-chief Bruce Deckert is an award-winning journalist who believes we all merit awards daily when we leverage our God-given gifts for good
Today Magazine covers community news that matters nationwide and worldwide, focusing on the heart of Connecticut’s Farmington Valley — the five core towns of Avon, Canton, Farmington, Granby and Simsbury
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