Joan B. Foth

CHIMAYO, Nm.- Artist and former Topekan Joan B. Foth, 80, died in Chimayo, New Mexico on July 22 of ovarian cancer. Best known for her Kansas landscapes, she exhibited her work in galleries in Topeka, Kansas City, Lawrence, Oklahoma City and Santa Fe. Her work is found in the collections of the Wichita Art Museum, the Beach Museum at Kansas State University, Topeka-Shawnee County Public Library and Mulvane Art Museum, in addition to many private collections in Kansas and nationally. A ten-year retrospective exhibition of her paintings was held at the Mulvane Art Museum in 1991. She was born in Elmira, NY, in 1930, the only child of Earl and Irene (Sack) Breon. The family moved to New York in 1941, where she attended the prestigious High School of Music and Art. She received a BA in Art History and Oriental Studies from Barnard College. In 1952, she married J. Richard Foth and the next year worked as a lecturer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her employment in Topeka began in 1954 as Assistant Director of the Kansas Museum of History. She joined the Mulvane Art Center board of directors and initiated the first Mulvane Art Fair in 1954. In 1958, she was hired as Adjunct Professor by the Washburn University Art Department, where she taught life drawing and watercolor for the next 25 years. The Washburn Alumni Association presented her with the Monroe Award in 1982 for outstanding contributions to the university as artist and teacher. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts by Washburn in 1998. She was chosen in 1970 as the first Kansas artist to participate in the National Endowment for the Arts Artist in the Schools program, serving residencies in Atchison, El Dorado and Hugoton. She received the Kansas Governors Artist Award from the Kansas Arts Commission in 1983. A 1981 article by Don Lambert in American Artist magazine introduced her work to a national audience. She is included in Phil Kovoniks Women Artists of the American West, Leading the West: 100 Painters and Sculptors by Donald Hagerty, Whos Who in American Art (1989-90), and A Kansas Collection by Patrick Rowley. A 1987 article by Lambert in Kansas Magazine caught the eye of William Least Heat Moon, who chose her painting for the cover of the hardback edition of PrairyErth. A member of the Kansas City Artists Coalition, her work appeared on the cover and in several articles in Forum magazine. She also illustrated Anazasi Ruins of the Southwest by Kansas archaeologists William M. Ferguson and Arthur H. Rohn. Foth began painting the New Mexico landscape in the late 1970s. She exhibited her work at Dewey Galleries in Santa Fe from 1982-92, and at the Munson Gallery starting in 1993. In 1990, she moved to Chimayo, north of Santa Fe. During the 1990s, her work appeared in Southwest Art and other regional magazines, and was featured on the 40th anniversary poster for the Santa Fe Opera. She was preceded in death by her husband, J. Richard Foth, Chief Judge of the Kansas Court of Appeals, and a nephew, Frederick Puff. She is survived by her children, Victoria (Kurt) Sherry, Wichita and Neil (Julie) Foth, Lake Quivira; two grandchildren, Jackson and Summer Foth; sister-in-law, Maxine Nosow, Bradenton, Florida; brother-in-law, Harold Puff, Oxford, Ohio; nieces, Edith Nosow, Fay Nosow, Janelle Puff Werbil and Meredith Hofmann; nephew, Robert Nosow; and other relatives and friends. A memorial service is planned for Saturday, August 7, in Topeka, time and place to be announced. The family of Joan B. Foth has entrusted the care of their loved one to DeVargas Funeral Home & Crematory. 505-747-7477, www.devargasfuneral.com Joan B. Foth