In Memoriam
Arthur Day
Born in 1923, Arthur Day grew up in suburban New Jersey. He attended Syracuse University before serving as a Navy pilot from 1943 to 1945. After World War II and obtaining a masters degree in international relations at the University of Chicago, he was appointed in 1950 to the U.S. Foreign Service. He served for the next 27 years at posts abroad and in Washington, including assignments as Deputy Chief of Mission in Berlin. Consul General in Jerusalem, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.
Arthur Day became a full time painter and joined the Jackson Art Center in 1992 when he and his wife moved to Georgetown, DC. He painted there until the summer of 2017. He had numerous solo exhibitions in Washington and on Cape Cod and acquired a circle of collectors of his work. He also generously donated a painting of the Jackson Art Center to the arts organization, which we now use as a logo. Arthur Day died in 2019.
Toby Mercuro
Here is what current Jackson Art Center president, Barbara Downs said about Toby Mercuro, Jackson Art Center painter shortly after his death in 2021: “Toby was such a gift to Jackson School, breathing life and energy into our mission as we were preparing to renegotiate a new lease with DC. He helped us mobilize our member community and our neighbors to effectively lobby for its continued existence. He helped organize our members to undertake an ambitious outreach program, giving arts workshops for adults and children in at risk communities.
In addition, Toby created and endowed the Lisa Neher Memorial Studio to honor a longtime member of the Jackson community who died suddenly in the fall of 2018. The endowment of studio space for a year has added several extraordinary artists to our roster. This was a thoughtful and generous gesture which continues to provide benefits to the recipient and to our member artists alike. We currently have an exceptional young artist, David R Ibata, using the studio. In addition to his own work, he teaches at the Duke Ellington School.”
Jeanette Murphy
Jeanette Murphy studied portrait painting in oils as an undergraduate working toward a liberal arts degree at GWU, but only returned to her art after retiring from a 30-year career at the World Bank. Since then, she diversified her art to include, as well as oil painting, drawing in various media, water color and ceramic sculpture. Her emphasis continued to be people, though in her painting she tried to go beyond portraiture, utilizing color and design to tell stories about their lives and interests.
She was at Jackson since 2009, and in her final studio (9B) for ten years. She so enjoyed being surrounded by other artists and, while she found that most creativity happens on one’s own, she was stimulated by the work and ideas of others.
Link to her website is here.
Lisa Neher
Born into a Foreign Service family, Lisa Neher grew up in Turkey, Morocco, Vietnam and Syria. She was a guiding force at the Jackson Art Center, organizing events and painting in her studio almost every day of the week and sometimes on the weekends. After she died suddenly in 2018, the Jackson Art Center honored her with a studio in her honor, the Lisa Neher Memorial Studio, offered to an artist in need and funded by JAC artist, Toby Mercuro. She is greatly missed.
What Lisa Neher said about her work: “When I began to paint, after not having touched a piece of artwork for years, I came to art with little formal training, and 30 years of making my way through the world. When Professor Steve Cushner, at the Corcoran School of Art, asked his class “What do you want to accomplish when you paint?” my answer was that I wanted to incorporate systems theory into my paintings - linking my subjects with their before's and after's, as dynamic rather than static. Of course, I had no idea how to do this. For years, I painted, learning my materials and capabilities. One day, a studio guest asked me how I produced my work. While explaining that I often painted over old paintings that didn’t satisfy me, I realized that each previous painting had left parts of itself to participate in the newer painting. The new painting became an unexpected and unpredictable image incorporating elements of everything that came before.”
Jane Lepscky
Jane Alice Snowden Lepscky, 80, of Washington, DC died in 2020. Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of the late Dr. Frank M. Snowden, Jr. and Elaine Hill. Jane graduated from Georgetown University and obtained a Master's degree from Howard University. A longtime Georgetown resident and accomplished artist, she could often be found at the Jackson Art Center in Georgetown where she had a studio. Jane lived and worked in Italy for many years and her paintings were inspired by the landscapes and architecture of Venice and Rome. She also painted abstract and portraits. Jane was an avid reader, linguist, traveler and will be remembered for her wit, warmth, and curiosity, but most of all for being a great mother and amazing grandmother.
Polly Kraft
Polly Kraft, Jackson Art Center artist, died at home in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., of pancreatic cancer. She was 89.
Mrs. Kraft was a prolific painter of still lifes. The images were not static, but filled with the busyness of life — a rumpled bed with a shawl among the sheets and scattered mail, a bowl of browning apple quarters replete with seeds. A 1981 quote from the art critic John Russell cited in her Washington Post obituary describes her work as the “poetry of dishevelment.”
“She specialized in the domestic pile-up — cushions knocked out of shape, books and magazines left askew, hasty departures acted out in verismo style,” Mr. Russell wrote in The New York Times.
Her artwork, in both watercolor and oil, was featured in prestigious galleries in Washington and New York, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Addison/ Ripley Fine Art, and the Fischbach Art Gallery. Locally, Mrs. Kraft’s work was hung in many East End houses, and for years it was exhibited at the Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton. The late gallery owner was a close friend. “I remember a wonderful series of watercolors Polly painted of bumble bees,” Ms. Benson’s daughter, Kimberly Goff, said.
Bernard Mozer
Image at right is of Bernard and close friend and fellow Jackson Art Center artist, Sherry Kaskey, in Montrose Park
Bernard Mozer, Jackson Art Center artist who died in February, 2014 at age 89, was born in Denver to Jewish parents, who had fled from pogroms and Russia during the Russian revolution. Although it was a depression era, his childhood years were rife with local adventures and family events. As a youngster and an older brother accompanied by their cousin, he once captained a small tricyclist crew who went adventuring un-chaperoned to scale Pike’s Peak, only to be thwarted by a Colorado state trooper.
Bert graduated from Denver’s East High School in 1943 and then served in the U.S. army during WWII in Europe from 1943-1945, during which time his company helped the Allied liberation effort including freeing the concentration camps. Upon his return to the States under the GI bill, he completed an undergraduate degree at Denver University and then a Master’s in electrical engineering at the University of Colorado in 1951, then a PhD in physics at Carnegie Tech, now called Carnegie Mellon University. Bert’s research as a post-doctoral fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratories in the 1960s and as a nuclear physicist at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) during the 1960s – 1980s (now called National Institute of Technology – NIST), involved solid-state physics.
He and his wife and family have lived in Pittsburg, PA, Long Island and Paris. Bernard retired from NBS in 1991 and pursued his passion for art, ceramics, and his love of travel and family. He immensely enjoyed his friends “circle” and studio neighbors at the Jackson Art Cooperative where he had the freedom to learn, craft, and apply his brand of expression through his art.