<b><i>In Memoriam</i>: Jeffrey Catherine Jones, 1944-2011</b>

Jeffrey C. Jones's distinctive “chop”

From her personal Facebook page: “Legendary fantasy artist JEFFREY CATHERINE JONES passed away today, Thursday May 19, 2011 at 4:00 am surrounded by family. Jeffrey suffered from severe emphysema and bronchitis as well as hardening of the arteries around the heart. Jeffrey’s dear friend Robert Wiener reported that there was a no resuscitation order as Jeffrey was weak from being severely underweight and had no reserves with which to fight.”

I must have first seen Jeff Jones’s (as she was then known) art in the late 1960s; she did covers for a number of Ace books, notably Andre Norton’s The Zero Stone, Postmarked the Stars, and others; those covers were more “painterly” than most Ace covers, but there was something there. In some ways reminiscent of Frazetta or Roy G. Krenkel, but something else as well. Then in the ’70s, there was Idyl for National Lampoon. (Lampoon in the ’70s had some of the coolest strips outside Heavy Metal, with Shary Flenniken’s Trots and Bonnie, and Bobby London’s Dirty Duck, among others.) Idyl was different from all the strips. If you follow the link you will see some very loose pen and ink drawings that were, nonetheless, not only heavy with meaning (vide the strip called “Aristotle”) — or at least certain to make you think about the strip, as opposed to the “eye candy” (popcorn for the mind) of many other strips — but also brilliantly composed and drawn in an “old masters” style that reminded me very much of Hogarth. Somewhere around the ’70s I began looking for that distinctive style and signature wherever I could find it; it appeared in comics, in Ted White’s Amazing Stories magazine, and other places.

Growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, I was exposed

J.C. Jones cover for E.C. Tubbs (Kenneth Bulmer) book Derai (#2 in the “Dumarest of Terra” series)

to science fiction and fantasy at a young age; one Christmas when I was nine or ten my parents gave me, wonder of wonders, two SF paperbacks; I can’t remember the names of the books or the authors, but one cover had a wonderful painting of Jupiter — and I’d swear it was by Kelly Freas, though I can’t find the name of it, search though I will. My best friend, James K. “Jimmy” Griffin, whom I haven’t heard of or from in 49 years, had a big collection of Ace doubles, which for you non-SF readers were paperbacks (originally only 25 cents each!) that had two different novella-length books; when you were done with one, you flipped the book and there was another one! The artists in these were people like Ed Valigursky, Ed Emshwiller (who always hid his “EMSH” signature somewhere in the picture — what a fun game that was, trying to find the EMSH!), and later, Richard Powers and many others. Jimmy also had a collection of Astounding Science Fiction (ASF), a magazine I loved, and which mostly had Kelly Freas covers. And then there were the comics (although my mother disparaged most comics and didn’t like us having them in the house). Those books and magazines were at the root of my love for the art of science fiction and fantasy. (I have done some SF illustration myself, and I married an artist, the lovely and talented Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk!)

Cover for On Spec: The First Five Years designed and executed by Steve and Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk

That love has continued to this day; I’ve run a number of convention artshows, and have auctioned many tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of sf and fantasy artwork. I have been privileged to meet, and become either real in-person (or snail mail, email or Facebook) friends with many artists who were my inspirations, and who continue to fascinate me. (My mother, a “serious” and classically-trained artist, often decried my love of what she thought of was trashy and ephemeral art — but I said then, and say now, that almost anything you find in the work of “classic” [i.e., “dead artist”] art can also be found in the work of practicing science fiction and fantasy artists.) Among those were and are Leo and Diane Dillon, Michael Whelan, Kelly Freas, Jack Gaughan, Rick Sternbach, Miles Teves and many more as in-person friends and acquaintances — I say this not to try to impress anyone, but to show how serious I am and have been about “genre” art — and among others I only know through Facebook are and were Jim Burns, Bob Eggleton and, yes, Jeffrey Catherine Jones! (Disclaimer: This is not to imply that anyone I know, either in person or on Facebook, is in any way less of an artist than those named.)

When I first got the answer some months ago from Jeffrey Catherine Jones that I was accepted as a Facebook friend, I went “Woo-hoo!”-ing all through the house. When I found out that she had been “regendered” from Jeff Jones to Jeffrey Catherine Jones, I was puzzled, but accepting. Forty-odd years of saying “he” had to be overturned in order to say “she.” (I allow every person to define him/herself; but like Popeye, I “yam what I yam,” and get more like me every day. I can understand the regendered — or transgendered, or whatever gender or sexual label you’d like to apply to yourself — intellectually, but emotionally I guess I don’t understand how or why people can’t be comfortable with what they are born with; but since it’s not something I have to come to terms with on a personal level, I can happily coexist with those who do.) And when I explained that to her, saying I didn’t even know what to call her, after calling her “Jeff Jones” for all these years, she said simply, “Call me JC.” And so I have through a fairly large number of Facebook conversations; she has been posting examples of her work for some time now, each picture at least as impressive, and sometimes more impressive than the last.

And now you tell me she’s gone. I wish, somehow, I had been able to pick up the phone and call her, and tell her, “Hey, JC, your work has been at once a solace, an inspiration and a heart-lifting favourite of mine for so many years!” I know that she had many accolades over the years — Frank Frazetta called her “the greatest living painter,” and the more I see of her works, the more I am inclined to agree to a great extent with that. (Which is not to denigrate any other currently living painter!) Rest in peace, Jeffrey Catherine Jones; I’m glad that we were able to touch each other, however briefly. I will miss you, and I think this photo shows how you would like to be remembered as a person.

Jeffrey Catherine Jones in happier times