Artist’s Failing Sight Gives Vision for Final Exhibit

It was fitting, everyone said, that Jack Taylor would ask the Alzheimer’s Assn. of Orange County to provide the pieces for his final art exhibit at the Rossmoor Towers at Leisure World in Laguna Hills.

Not that Taylor, at 84, is suffering any dementia. The longtime Laguna Beach artist’s wit remains sharp, his mental and physical health strong. But Taylor can identify with those Alzheimer’s patients who struggle to communicate as they slowly lose grasp of their lives.

After three years of producing monthly art exhibits at the Towers, Jack Taylor has to give it up after this one.

He’s going blind.

“I really thought I’d adjust to this better than I have,” Taylor told me in the Towers home he shares with his wife, Irene, and their many pieces of art and finely detailed crafts. “I’m determined to make it to 100, because I have so much left to do. But I need my eyes to do it all.”

The sight in his left eye is gone. Growing cataracts, he recently learned, will likely soon cost him the sight he has left. He might prolong it with surgery, but Taylor knew his beloved and popular art exhibits were now too much for him.

The exhibits’ artists have always been Towers residents, some retired professional artists, some Taylor’s own students. The exhibits have been part therapy, and part great fun. Each “Artist of the Month” has an autobiography published in the local resident newspaper.

But with his eye problems closing in on him, Taylor wanted a special statement for his final exhibit. He knew of the Alzheimer’s Assn.’s painting program, and asked its cooperation.

“I wanted to share with my friends here that these people [who suffer from Alzheimer’s] have something left to give,” Taylor said. “Part of the joy of art is interpreting what the artist wants us to see.”

It’s a joy that has consumed his life.

Taylor’s first taste of that world came before he entered kindergarten in his native Philadelphia. He wandered into a neighbor’s yard, where the family created designs for their carpet business in their backyard studio. They invited the young lad to join in.

After high school, with his family struggling through the Depression, Taylor won a full four-year scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum School of Art. That led to a painting career and a New York theater job in set design.

Taylor enlisted in the military during World War II, but ulcers forced him out after the first year. Taylor and his first wife, Violette, yearned to move west. One of his first gigs in California was as a Saks Fifth Avenue window dresser. Window dressing, Taylor contends with a chuckle, can be great art if done properly.

Taylor’s wife died unexpectedly, and in 1945, Taylor and his second wife, Roberta, moved to Laguna Beach.

“Laguna was so beautiful back then, just unbelievable,” he said.

For jobs, Roberta joined the local newspaper, and Taylor painted and went to work for a small ceramics factory, where his art education extended to pottery.

“I’d never thrown a pot before, except in anger,” he quipped.

He loved it so much he eventually bought the company. In those days, Taylor said, those who exhibited work at festivals debated whether craftspeople were true artists. So Taylor formed the first Laguna Beach Crafts Guild. He proudly showed me the plaque in which the guild honored him as its first guild master. (This was the same guild that eventually founded the annual Sawdust Festival.)

He also taught art at a private school, and spent his weekends volunteering art lessons at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana.

“I’ve been so very lucky that I’ve always made a living doing something related to art,” he said.

Taylor’s second wife died of cancer about 15 years ago. Taylor then spent five months on a world tour aboard a Polish freighter, where he busied himself with painting to recover from her death.

Upon his return, Taylor moved into Leisure World, where he eventually married his third wife, Irene.

“We met on a bus ride to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,” he said with a wry smile. “When we got back, she asked me for art lessons.”

Taylor was teaching to so many of his fellow residents, he realized he needed an outlet for their work. When two large display cases on the second floor of the Towers became available, he lobbied to take them over.

Nearly 100 residents showed up for his first “Artist of the Month” opening. Each show would highlight just one artist. He never ran out of people willing to bring him their work for consideration. The Towers staff supported him by providing refreshments for his openings.

The Alzheimer’s exhibit will remain in place for a month. But Taylor says he’s got one more important Towers show to do. It’s a one-day affair Sunday, a retrospective of some of the artists he has displayed before. It will be a fund-raiser for the Reform Temple of Laguna Hills.

“After that, I guess I’ll have to find some way to be blind and still create art,” he said. “But how can I complain? Art has enriched me. I would never have lived this long without it.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail tojerry.hicks@latimes.com