SFScope friend Andrew Porter reports on the death of artist Jeffrey Catherine Jones on 19 May 2011; Jones had been suffering from severe emphysema and bronchitis as well as hardening of the arteries around the heart. Born 10 January 1944 in Atlanta, Georgia, Jones moved to New York about 1970, and shared workspace in Manhattan’s Chelsea district with Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Michael William Kaluta, collectively named The Studio. Jones won the 1986 World Fantasy Award for Best Artist, and the 2006 Spectrum Grandmaster Award, and was nominated for four Hugos, one Chesley Award, one British Fantasy Award, and another World Fantasy Award. He painted more than 150 book covers, including the Ace paperback editions of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series and Andre Norton’s Postmarked the Stars, The Zero Stone, and Uncharted Stars. He also did work for Ted White’s Fantastic.
Born a male, Jones writes on her web site: “In August 1998, I decided to stop the denial and start living as a woman. In October I finally obtained the name of and saw the leading expert on the subject.… After extensive tests, both mental and physical, I started hormonal gender re-assignment therapy. It’s been about ten years now, but back in May blood tests showed that I had become medically female. The process continues.”
Reporting Jones’ death, Robert Weiner writes:
My long time friend Jeffrey Jones died this morning.
He was suffering from severe emphysema and bronchitis as well as hardening of the arteries around the heart. He had a no resuscitation order. He was weak from from being severely under weight and had no reserves with which to fight.
He was not aware of his surroundings while I was with him in the hospital yesterday nor the home he was moved to in order to receive hospice care. I said my goodbyes last night.
In accord with his wishes he will be cremated. His daughter Julianna will be announcing plans for a memorial service.
Andrew Porter writes:
I first met Jeffrey Jones in the late 1960s and in fact still have the plaster sculpture he did back in 1970. I published art by him in my zine Algol. At the time, he’d just moved to NYC from Georgia, so he could be near the publishers and magazines that were his market for artwork. This, of course, was in the days before FedEx and similar services made such requirements obsolete. He was married at the time to Louise “Weezie” Jones, who later divorced him and herself had a long career in the comics field.
None of us knew at the time how conflicted he was about his gender identity, which several decades ago resulted in his becoming a transgendered woman. I do not know how this conflict and its eventual resolution affected his career. Certainly he was widely published in the last part of the 20th century as a major cover artist for magazines and books, associated widely with numerous contributions to Heavy Metal and especially National Lampoon.
I contacted him in 2006, inquiring about that sculpture. He e-mailed me in response: “Of course I remember you… and I’m 62. If memory serves, there were 75 casts of the sculpture. As long as I can hold a brush I guess I’ll never retire.”
Now he’s gone, but his wonderful artwork remains for us all to enjoy.
Jones’ web site has extensive biographical information and samples.