DeeDee

BENNINGTON -- Pownal housewife Jane Walsh died in April, but her artistic legacy will live on -- and on.

Walsh decorated everything in her life, painting almost every surface she could get her hands on -- baskets, boxes, cradles, hats, finials done up as Santa Claus -- as well as painting after painting on paper.

But she was best known, locally and outside the area, for her eggs. Some are relatively simple, to use the term loosely -- pysanky, eggs decorated in the wax-resist, multiple-dye method common to Ukraine. Others are carved, painted, trimmed with ribbon, filled with scenes or even a small clock. Tiny latches and hinges open to reveal entire worlds, encompassed in an eggshell. Fox hunters prance, awaiting the call of the horn. A bear rests in a grove of birches carved painstakingly from the shell of an egg. Stars, moons and the signs of the zodiac dance across dark velvet in a tiny triptych.

"She's been doing art since I was 8 years old, 50 years at least," said son David, who is now going through his late parents' home, preparing to sell it. "She did leathercraft, herbs, needlepoint, there were a lot of things she was into. She'd get revved up on it, on things that were creative," he said.

And David Walsh is still finding the results of his mother's enthusiasm. "I just found two boxes of paintings behind the couch, that I didn't know were there," he said.

Walsh's husband had Alzheimer's disease, and she was his caretaker for about 10
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years, especially for the last two, as the disease progressed, according to Linda Raetz, a friend.

"She couldn't leave him (alone). That was her escape," Raetz said, referring to Walsh's artwork. "She could not get out. He had hospice and home health, and this allowed him to stay home. As she became less mobile, everything was in that room -- her credit cards, the phone. We just found a self-portrait labeled ‘Welcome to my Studio.'"

"She was always learning," David Walsh said. "And she had her own style. If there were 100 pictures, I could pick hers out. She would see a picture and say, ‘I've got to paint that!'"

"She would take a pad and do every page," Raetz said.

Raetz and Walsh have found notebooks, each page filled with another watercolor painting, each of which Raetz has carefully razored out and protected with plastic folders. "She did everything with six colors, but she must have blended 100 colors," she said.

"It's amazing how much stuff she made. She was one of the founding members of the Egg Art Guild," said Walsh. "She would go to shows. It was one of the things she would do with her sister, too. They would pack up and go around to egg shows."

Eggs would be carved, painted or dyed. Some would be stained with tea or coffee, then have designs scratched into the surface, revealing the white undershell beneath. A drawer in Walsh's studio is still full of blown-out shells, ready to be worked.

Walsh said his mother was always disappointed that neither he nor his brother had any art talent at all.

"Anyone can do it, but some people have the flair," Raetz said.

Walsh nodded. "When we were kids, we made an attempt at it. I painted one and then threw it away. She painted everything. Her dishes, in this little house, are amazing."

And it's just too much for Walsh to keep, so he's planning a sale of his mother's works and her supplies. Raetz is organizing the sale, which will take place at the Solomon Wright Library in Pownal, Oct. 18. "There will be eggs, and many paintings ... she was such an amazing artist, self-taught," Raetz said.

"David just wants to get rid of it all, to people who will use it. It will be a used art supply sale. There must be 1,000 brushes. I filled a mop pail and it didn't make a dent," Raetz said. "There are calligraphy pens that were $74 and $90, new. If she needed it, she got it. There are four or five easels, an artist's chair that holds paints and brushes. ... Her work was exquisite."

Raetz, in an effort to clear out the excess, is planning the sale as simply as possible. She expects to have tables organized by price: "A $1 table, a $5 table." Watercolor paintings that were priced at $15 or $20 at the Bennington Car Show last month will go for $5 or $10 on the 18th, and art teachers looking for supplies for their students are strongly encouraged to come peruse the tables. "What doesn't go, we'll box" and sell in lots, Raetz said.

And finally, "What we don't sell and I don't force my brother to take will probably end up on eBay," Walsh said.

Before that happens, though, Jane Walsh's legacy is well worth a look.

Reach Stephanie Ryan at sryan@benningtonbanner.com.