Raybn Blake Sercarz

1933 - 2018

February 14, 1933 - January 29, 2018 Luminous Artist and Community/Environmental Activist, Rabyn Blake Sercarz died January 29, 2018. Born Florence Rabon Blake to Preston and Emily Blake in Norfolk, Virginia, the third of four children of the Blakes. Her father was a pastor, after his own father, and then left that vocation and worked in insurance. Her mother was wise and loving, and figured in some of Rabyn's artworks. As a child, she was known as Flo, but took the name Rabyn during her college years. Rabyn had a magnetic personality and was enlivening to anyone who had the privilege to know her. Rabyn received her BA in French Literature at Longwood College and then came to the West Coast to study for her Master's from Claremont College. Her friend, artist and jack-of-all-trades David Allen, followed her from Virginia and the two remained close throughout her life, partnering in many artistic projects. At Claremont, she met a group of friends, including her first husband, Jim Sheldon, an engineer and psychotherapist, and the poet Kate Barnes, with whom she corresponded daily throughout their lives. The Sheldon's moved to Echo Park and then settled in the progressive, bohemian community of Topanga Canyon, where she remained until her death. Both of her sons, Charles and Andrew, were born there and have settled there with their own families. She remained a fixture in the artistic and political communities in Topanga, deeply rooted to the land, engaged in local politics and environmental concerns, earning recognition as "Citizen of the Year" in 1998. Rabyn studied art at Otis Art Institute in the '70s where she became a pioneer in video art, earning an MFA in Intermedia and Sculpture. She showed her work widely from the '70s until just recently at Beyond Baroque in Venice. She was an early pioneer of videography as an art form. Her video art was in the Long Beach Museum of Art collection, which since was acquired by the Getty Museum's archive. One of her most renowned projects involved digging a mud pool on her property and inviting people to perform in the ooze while she created video pieces and happenings. The 1976 production of "Mudpool," brought forth a revolutionary video work inspired by Rabyn's unique blend of artistic, societal, and environmental concerns. Rabyn's later artwork continued to explore connections between humans and the natural environment, presented in sculpture, paint, and assemblage formats. Her work was featured in magazines such as WET, Artweek and Artillery as well as the Topanga Messenger. Also in the '70s Rabyn joined with her 2nd husband, Immunologist Eli Sercarz, who became her love and soulmate (both had Valentine's Day birthdays!) until his death in 2009, after she nursed him through a struggle with cancer. The two traveled widely and with a sense of adventure, and an appreciation for the cultures of the world. During her work with Greenpeace and other anti-nuclear organizations in the early 1980s, Rabyn painted Eli's VW van like a mobile watermelon "bomb" as an anti-war, pro-environmental statement and performance. Rabyn was highly articulate, using her facility with language to promote watershed management, craft campaigns against environmental toxics and fluoridation in the water, earning herself the nickname "Rabid Rabyn" with County administrators for her tenacity and fervor in these efforts. Rabyn was a long-serving board member with the Topanga Association for a Scenic Community (TASC). In 2001, she founded and originally directed the Topanga Creek Watershed Committee, and later the Santa Monica Mountains Coalition for Alternatives to Toxins (SCAT). She was extremely well-read, dabbling in fiction herself, and hostess in recent years to bi-annual poetry readings at her home, in a kind of neo-pagan ritual. Rabyn was an extraordinary and brilliant human being, a fierce warrior for the earth, alternative healing, and her community. Rabyn was passionate about alternative healing and became an expert for her husband, friends and finally herself, refusing traditional medicine and surviving cancer years beyond medical expectation before finally succumbing to the disease. She was 84. Rabyn was generous with her attentions and counsel, mentoring and corresponding with family and friends from all over the country, always with supreme wit and warmth, managing to find the strengths and potential in everyone she met. She had a delicious sense of the possible, many varieties of infectious laughter, a deep and broad intellect and appetite for and life (and roast lamb!). Rabyn was a great inspiration to all those who knew her, for the brilliant, creative and whole-hearted way she lived her life. She leaves a huge community of friends, comrades, co-conspirators, artists, poets, her 2 sons, and 5 grandchildren, 3 step-children and their 9 children. She will be painfully missed and dearly remembered by all. A private memorial will be held in April.