Joan Sara Elwyn Taylor

Joan Sara Elwyn Taylor was born on April 17, 1929, in New York City, in Manhattan, and passed away on May 10, 2024, in Washington DC. She was the daughter of Eleanor Levin and Benjamin Elwyn, and she had a beloved older brother, Alex. Her early years were spent in Manhattan. Joan was educated at the Little Red School House, in Greenwich Village, went to the High school of Music and Art in Manhattan, and attended Brooklyn College, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She was married to John Lewis Taylor from 1963 to 1994, and is survived by her children Sarah Blaser and Andrew Taylor, her grandchildren Eleanor Blaser and James Blaser, and her son-in-law Rob Blaser and daughter-in-law Grace Guggenheim.

But these are just historical facts that do not convey the rich texture of Joan’s life. She was a lifelong spiritual searcher and was interested in the relationship between the psychological and the spiritual, as well as in religious community. Her family was of Jewish descent, but she and John joined the 15th Street Quaker Meeting in New York City, and she was a member of various Quaker, Protestant and Jewish religious communities over the course of her life. Both Judaism and Quakerism emphasize the individuals’ personal relationship with God.

She was also a world traveler who lived in various Asian nations from 1965-1993 (with intermittent stops back in the States), experiences that profoundly influenced her perspective and sensibilities. Joan lived with the family and then with John in India from 1965 to 1969, Bangkok, Thailand from 1971 to 1973, the beautiful island of Penang, Malaysia from 1973 to 1976, and Indonesia from 1978 to 1993. Joan enthusiastically immersed herself in the vibrant cultures and histories of all the places she lived in, and loved the colorful tropical landscapes, as reflected in the hundreds of joyful watercolors that she produced. In Indonesia she became interested in the vast world of Indonesian textiles, as well as the historic Southeast-Asian trade in Chinese Ceramics, becoming a docent at the ceramic collection of the National Museum in Jakarta.

In 1993 Joan parted ways with John and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Joan loved the landscape, the sky and the light of New Mexico, well as the deep history of the local cultures there. She joined the Albuquerque Friend’s Meeting and enjoyed the community of friends that she made there.

Joan was immensely proud of her daughter Sarah, an intuitive educator and committed social activist, and her son Andrew, an architect and her primary caretaker during the latter years of her life. She was even prouder of her grandchildren Eleanor and James; whenever their parents would say “Ellie/James achieved XYZ,” she would respond “of course they did, she/he is my granddaughter/grandson.” Ellie is now successfully active in progressive political causes, and James is an educator in the Philadelphia area and a man who lives to help others.

Joan was a humble yet accomplished artist across all mediums, and to say she was prolific is an understatement. In recent years Andrew complied an anthology of her works that is nothing less than prodigious and breathtaking. She was a very visual person who loved color, and she enjoyed nothing more than sketching people and landscapes, in particular rocks along the ocean. Additionally, she was a cartographer working in a man’s world in the 1970’s to support the family when her husband was earning his PhD in Urban Planning at UCLA. Until late in life she remembered the street names of California towns that she drew maps of but had never visited.

Joan was a foodie before it was cool, an avowed carnivore (not so hot on the fish) who loved Indonesian satay, fried rice, and beef rendang, Italian sausage and peppers, turkey, and prime rib at the holidays, and of course a New York hot dog. Diet Coke served as her “nectar of the Gods” for many years. Joan was also knowledgeable and curious about so many topics, and close to this correspondent’s heart was her regard for sports. She was a tennis and soccer (c’mon, it’s football) aficionado, and was a Yankees fan, to the extent that she would sometimes say she was “an American League fan.” This minor point that is meaningful to baseball fans of a certain vintage illustrates the keen nuance of Joan’s understanding of the things around her—she looked deeper into subjects and issues than most folks do, offered incredible historical insight on topics big and small (as a young woman she occasionally rode an elevator with Eleanor Roosevelt and her dog Fala), and simply knew a lot about a lot of things.

Joan Sara Elwyn Taylor will be deeply missed by her family and all of those whose lives she touched