Anne Tutt Kalinin loved all things beautiful, friends and family said.
Her galleries were full to the gills of striking pieces and various expressions of art, said her former Pine Mountain pastor, the Rev. Wayne Hollaway.
“Underneath all of that was the beauty of her personal Christian faith,” he said. “She would always say the shop was her excuse to meet people and share the love of Christ.”
Mrs. Tutt Kalinin owned and operated her own art gallery, which started as Anne Tutt Studio-Gallery, but the word ‘studio’ was later dropped. Over the course of 45 years, she had locations in Macon, Pine Mountain and Beaufort, S.C., said her son Jefferson “Jay” W. Tutt, Jr. The Macon gallery was the first to open, and then she added the Beaufort location when she moved to the area, Mr. Tutt said. She closed the Beaufort gallery when she moved to Pine Mountain, where she opened a gallery. After a few years, she closed the Macon location, keeping the Pine Mountain gallery, as traveling back and forth was not as easy as she aged, her son said.
“She was a workaholic in the best sense of the word,” Mr. Tutt said of his mother. The only reason she stopped working was because she got sick last year, he said.
Pamela Anne Johnson Tutt Kalinin, of Duluth, known to all as Anne, died Dec. 3 after struggling with multiple illnesses. She was 85. A memorial service has been planned for noon Monday in the chapel at Perimeter Church, 9500 Medlock Bridge Road, Johns Creek. Crowell Brothers Peachtree Chapel Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
Mrs. Tutt Kalinin’s passion was always art, her son said. His mother, a Macon native, loved it so much that is what she pursued in college. She attended the University of Alabama for a while, then moved back to Macon and enrolled at Wesleyan College and majored in fine art. While she loved to paint, she understood her passion might not be enough to sustain her family, he said.
“She knew an artist’s professional lifespan was three to four years so she decided to represent artists,” he said. “That how she made her career last as long as it did. And she enjoyed representing artists from all over.”
She also immensely enjoyed the part of being a gallery owner that allowed her to visit the offices and homes of her clients and decorate their walls with art, he said.
The gallery, where Mrs. Tutt Kalinin spent a lot of her time, was more than a place to sell art, it was a place of ministry, Mr. Tutt said.
Rev. Hollaway said Mrs. Tutt Kalinin was far more interested in her customers’ physical and spiritual health than making a sale.
“She was a savvy sales person and could have simply moved a great deal of merchandise,” he said in remarks prepared for the memorial service. “But Anne was interested in the customers themselves.”
He said she had many “spontaneous prayer meetings” in the gallery. Mrs. Tutt Kalinin would clasp the hands of a person in hers, with tears of joy or concern flooding her face in response to the triumphs and tragedies they shared, he said.
"She was not feigning interest in them before or after the sale," Rev. Hollaway said. "She cared."
Mrs. Tutt Kalinin is also survived by four granddaughters and one great-grandson.
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