Artographer, Kali

Joan Archibald left her Long Island home and family in 1966, and ran away to the West Coast to reinvent herself as Kali and take up photography at the College of the Desert in Palm Springs. 

After palling around with the likes of Richard Chamberlain in Malibu, she moved to a house in Palm Springs once owned by Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, and began creating “Artography” in earnest: haunting portraits and double-exposed landscapes made with film, developed in her Roman bathtub, and finished by hand coloring with dyes, spray paint, and even dirt and bugs, in her swimming pool. Trippy, painterly, intensely colorful prints and later Polaroids were made and seldom seen outside a tight circle . She published a few pieces in photo magazines, but by the late 70s locked the work away in suitcases inside her garage, never to be seen again for over 40 years. 

 Kali’s daughter, when cleaning out the house after her death, discovered the work and something more.