Husband’s death inspires Mt. Airy artist, CHC grad

Posted 1/8/16

Although her face is partially hidden here, Ruth said, “I would prefer to use this photo, as it was done by Frank, and I feel it belongs with the imagery I am making about memories of life with …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Husband’s death inspires Mt. Airy artist, CHC grad

Posted
Although her face is partially hidden here, Ruth said, “I would prefer to use this photo, as it was done by Frank, and I feel it belongs with the imagery I am making about memories of life with him.” Although her face is partially hidden here, Ruth said, “I would prefer to use this photo, as it was done by Frank, and I feel it belongs with the imagery I am making about memories of life with him.”[/caption]

by Lou Mancinelli

Although she has worked as an art teacher in the area for more than 35 years and been painting longer than that, the paintings Ruth Joray has been creating the past few months are different from any of the work she had ever previously done.

Her turnaround comes on the heels of the death of her husband of 30 years this past September. He ― Frank Root ― earned his living as a highly regarded artist, and in the basement of their Mt. Airy home he maintained a disorganized, busy studio. If his studio was disorganized, according to Joray, his finished products were precise. For years Joray helped her husband with the organizational aspect of his art career, and in that way they collaborated.

According to Ruth, Frank did carved and constructed reliefs. “He called them 3-D drawings. His work is nearly all in relief until there came a point when he could no longer do the complex problem solving of creating physically shallow, but visibly deep spaces. Then he started his jazz portraits, all 2-D drawings.

“Frank's work has been described as bas relief, a type of shallow sculpture. I am not sure that is completely accurate since he did not always work from a flat background surface. He made up his media and genres, which changed completely about every 10 years.”

Ruth’s painting of cherry blossoms are from a branch on a tree that was growing in their front yard in Mt. Airy when they moved in 15 years ago. “Frank (her late husband) loved the tree and the beautiful mess it made after blooming,” Ruth said. Ruth’s painting of cherry blossoms are from a branch on a tree that was growing in their front yard in Mt. Airy when they moved in 15 years ago. “Frank (her late husband) loved the tree and the beautiful mess it made after blooming,” Ruth said.[/caption]

Shortly after his death, Joray was looking for a way to make sense of her life without Frank. Her husband had had dementia for five years, but his death was still unexpected.

“When he died, I was absolutely plagued by this idea of: where did his mind go? … So I spent some time down in this completely crazy basement … I had had this idea that if I spent time with his stuff (his unfinished works), then I can somehow understand what happened.”

Joray started writing at night. She hoped expressing herself would relieve her profound grief. And she started making sketches too. She said her idea was: “If I start drawing I'll understand it better; I'll understand something.”

Around Joray's home, and in the basement too, are photographs she has taken over the years during her travels. She had always taken pictures of the places she had been with Frank or patterns that moved them. She doesn’t know why, but soon Joray started drawing some of the patterns. “It calmed me down unbelievably.”

Since then she has painted a series of watercolors, each painting an 8’ x 10’ depiction of one of those photographs she took in the past. So far, the pieces all depict nature. In creating a new painting based on an old photograph, Joray is giving rebirth to old memories.

The paintings ― a few leaves, a lake scene, bare autumn branches ― appear void of the despair Joray said she felt over her husband's death. There is an endearing, luminous, uplifting quality to them that points to something off the canvas.

In one, depicting pigeons perched on the edge of a snowy roof ― based on a black and white photograph ― one of the pigeons has its hide cocked to the side. It reminds one of the way a dog often angles his head to the side. Joray's pigeons on the roof scene suggest an engagement between an observer and something else. Is she sensing her husband's presence?

“Once I started doing this, I realized there was something beyond this image,” she said of her new work. “What I'm showing is negative space … It's a metaphor. I'm much more aware of the intervals created by light and shadow and what is depicted by what is not there.”

Raised in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., Joray, 67, earned a BFA in painting as well as a degree in art education from Rhode Island School of Design in 1970. There she met a man who became her first husband. After school the two moved to Philadelphia. They had a daughter (who's now 42); the marriage lasted 12 years. Meanwhile, Joray exhibited sparingly ― at Woodmere Art Museum and at an Art Alliance event ― while working various part-time jobs, including as an art teacher.

Sculptor Frank Root is seen here in his Mt. Airy home last summer, shortly before he died in September. Sculptor Frank Root is seen here in his Mt. Airy home last summer, shortly before he died in September.

At that time she was working in 3-D mixed-media. She painted sculpted surfaces (paintings that project from the wall). When Joray met Root years later, they connected through art, as she had with her previous husband.

Shortly after the two married in 1980, Joray began teaching art full-time. She would eventually teach at The Shipley School in Bryn Mawr for 17 years, become director of The Quaker School at Horsham and teach at various other schools and art centers. Until 12 years ago, she worked at Woodmere and had done so for 20 years. There Joray was instrumental in creating a program to exhibit some of the children's art work in classes she taught, which eventually led to the creation of the museum's Children's Gallery. Most recently, Joray started her first year teaching at MileStone Academy in Jenkintown. (Joray also has a degree in counseling psychology from Chestnut Hill College and worked as a counselor for 12 years.)

Watching her husband suffer from dementia was painful. “The thing that happened is he lost his creativity,” she said. To the point where he could no longer finish his pieces. So painting for Ruth “is a way for me to discover how to move on. It is kind of a reawakening of what I'm able to do.”

For more information, email joroot@aol.com.

featured, locallife, mt-airy