Ann Farr June 13 1943--October 4 2004

Al and RJ's mom would have been 62 today.

She died unexpectedly of a heart attack in her home in Beaverton, Oregon. She had called in sick to work the previous week, and then had missed the next two days of work without calling in which was totally uncharacteristic of her. Her boss called Alex to say no one could get ahold of her, she wasn't answering the phone. Alex called RJ, who lives in Seattle and is closer, to check it out. RJ drove down, and sadly, discovered her body upstairs outside the master bathoroom, the water running in the bathtub.

Alex made frantic calls to Alaska Airline and we booked a flight going out first thing the next morning. Adulthood hit us like a ton of bricks. I went up to support Al, and to make sure they didn't throw out all the baby pictures. Al and RJ had always averred that there weren't any, and in fact they may not ever have really been children. But Ann was an artist and I was sure she would have documented.

Ann was a fellow alum of CCAC, which she attended in 1961-1962. After that, she left to go to SFAI for a year or two. When I met her, she knew that I had gone to CCAC. Almost her first question to me was, So, do you like Diebenkorn? Oh, hell yeah, I answered. She nodded and lit up a Virginia Slim. That was it, I was in.

She moved around a lot, but she always set up a studio to paint in, in her home, particularly after the boys got older. Her house in Beaverton was lined with stacks of painting, hundreds of them I would guess. She mostly painted abstract in acrylic on canvas. We did find a painting of Alex, done from a photograph taken at one of his readings.

She was married in 1964 to John Farr, who had emigrated to America from Iran when he was 18. He changed his name from Ali Reza Sanjarifar. No one seems to sure how they met. But she had tons of pictures of him and drawings in her sketchbook from the time. We found old letters and postcards and they were wild about each other. She dropped out of school and they went into real estate together. They did really well for awhile from what I can gather. There are lots of funny photos of them in supper clubs in Reno and Vegas.

He was in a head on collision with a lumber truck after the boys were born. He lived through that by some miracle. But the damage changed his personality drastically and not for the better. Ann and John divorced and he died in 1980 of cirrhosis.

Ann was only a few years away from retirement when she died. She was having a house built for herself in the next town over, and was looking forward to having nothing to do but paint. I was looking forward to getting to know her a little better. She had a dry and acerbic sense of humor, with a voice like William Burroughs. Alex and Ann didn't keep in touch very well, but they did have two very long phone conversations in the summer before she died.

While Alex and RJ wen through the maze of legalities that death brings on grieving loved ones, I sorted through her keepsake boxes. There was tons of stuff. I was right, she knew to document. At CCAC, they always taught us the importance of the source material. I still haven't finished sorting what I brought back with us, and that isn't even a fraction of what is still in storage in Oregon.

As an artist, I figured if I died, I'd want someone to hang on to my sketchbooks and notes and drawings, etc. So, I have a little archive of her stuff and thought I'd post of few of my favorites for her birthday. Also, I did find the baby pictures. Alex WAS a child and a very very cute one. There are so many pictures of him I think he might win some kind of record as most photographed baby in the world. Not only are there photos, I also found a box of slides that documents a walk he took as a two year old across the lawn one afternoon. I restraining myself and only posting one of him.

Bye, Ann. If there's an afterlife and you're in it, hopefully you're hanging out with Deibenkorn.