Art through the Generations
...from teacher to students
Doris Klindt Naccarato (born December 12, 1931)
She signs canvases simply with her nickname Dori, but Coronado High School friends know her as Doris Klindt, class of 1951. Dori’s love of art began in Coronado’s public school system, where Esther Painter Hagstrom was in charge of art curriculum from 1937 until her death in 1951.
Shortly after graduating from high school, Dori married Charles Turnipseed, star athlete of the class of 1949. Within a few years, they started a family and moved to Palm Springs.
Their youngest daughter, Toni McGowan, recalls that wherever her mother Dori lived, she was constantly creating. “Our dining room table was always a work station. I remember my mother being up late working.”
Dori Naccarato
with her "modern still life"
In addition to painting, drawing and sculpting, Dori designed and made costume jewelry and clothing, including crocheted bikinis before they were trendy. She sold her “wearable art” in her own shops: Bare Essentials in Rancho Mirage, the Sunflower in Palm Springs and Charly’s in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Doris Klindt
1949 majorette at Coronado High School
In the California desert Dori’s clients included Frank Sinatra, Tom Selleck, Kitty White and Nancy Sinatra. Hotels, restaurants and private collectors commissioned her for paintings. While living in Idaho during the 1980s, she shaped paper-mache into large birds and giraffes. “I got inspired by magazines,” she said of her whimsical creatures.
Before returning to her hometown in 2009, Dori lived in Baja California and Hemet. “I love to paint. I painted hundreds of paintings,” Dori Naccarato states in a personal memoir she helped write with her daughter Toni. Together they documented Dori’s life as an artist. Because she lives in the memory care unit of Coronado Retirement Village, Dori relies on Toni to help her remember.
Art helped Dori cope with life’s ups and downs, including some traumatic childhood experiences and several whirlwind marriages. “Art was Mom’s escape,” Toni said. “Art was a safe place.”
Slide Show
(Please click on the "thumbnails" below to view John Clamplitt's watercolors.)
