Artist is back to doing what she loves best

A break from art reinforced for Judith Tame just how important it is in her life.

Tame and Jack, her husband of 58 years, live in Deep Creek. Natives of Michigan, they retired here 15 years ago. Tame spent much of her time creating mosaic artwork and teaching others.

But events and other priorities kept her away until January of this year.

There was the COVID-19 pandemic and then Hurricane Ian hit the area.

On Nov. 3, 2022, her husband was injured in an accident.

Jack was in their backyard cutting up branches from trees felled by Ian.

“We had oak trees on the lot,” Tame said. “This last oak tree was damaged from Charley. We were not even here then; the house was not even built then.

“It was old, and he said, ‘I might as well cut this one down, too. We won’t have to worry about it.’ And a limb fell on him, and he lost his leg.”

A branch also hit Jack’s head. The injury affected his eyesight and memory.

“All that period of time I did nothing. I did not have much choice. I stopped painting. I stopped mosaics. I stopped everything I do in this room,” she said, referring to the art room that Jack built for her in a spare bedroom.

“I had no life. I felt a little empty actually, because it’s relaxing to me.”

Tame also stopped teaching classes, which she did in her art room. She stopped attending local art shows. She spent much of her time visiting Jack in two nursing homes. She was by his side when he battled MRSA ( a bacterial infection).

Tame said she only got back into her art room after it was clear that Jack could function 60% on his own. (Nursing homes are in his rear-view mirror.)

“He does a lot by himself, so he doesn’t need me. I’m not as important anymore,” Tame said, revealing a sense of humor that no doubt buoyed her during the past four years.

She returned to the art room “very gradually,” she said.

“He was functioning on his own and I said, ‘You know what? I can come in here for an hour and relax, do my thing, and I’ll be happy for the day. And then it increased to two hours, three hours.’”

She got a lot of work accomplished when he was sleeping.

During Jack’s recovery, Tame’s former students, who were creating art on their own, “would call me,” she said, reporting in about their projects and asking questions to solve problems. “So I was busy with that,” she said.

TOGETHER SIX DECADES

Tame and Jack met in Milford, Michigan, almost six decades ago.

In Michigan, Tame worked at an HMO and painted the interiors of houses. She said she’s loved art ever since she started making Christmas cards at age 5.

Tame considers herself a self-taught artist, except for one technique. She got interested in mosaics in 1986 when a neighbor invited her to a gallery where she had a showing and displayed mosaics.

“I fell in love. I said, ‘You’ve got to show me how to do this.’”

The neighbor gave her 15 minutes of training and sent her on her way. That was enough.

“I’ve been doing it a long time,” Tame said.

She’s been selling her mosaics since about a year after her impromptu lesson. She also creates and sells chimes, and uses mosaics to beautify cigar and other boxes, serving trays and jewelry.

STUDENTS RETURN

Tame teaches paint pouring, alcohol inks, mosaics and glass-on-glass. She can teach up to four people in her art room, with Myrtle, their 10-year-old pit bull-boxer rescue, greeting each student as they enter.

Jack, a retired engineer, gets involved by hanging pictures and managing “the mechanical part of whatever she does.

“I’m just so happy that she has taken care of me,” he said.

One of her students, Nancy Kaplan, became a good friend.

Kaplan was out walking her dog Ruby, a vizsla, on Tame’s street. She stopped to ask a neighbor where his wife was. He said, ‘She’s across the street doing mosaics with Judy.’”

Thus began a six-year friendship that started with Kaplan as one of Tame’s many art students.

“I had never met Judy and I’d always wanted to do mosaics and it was like it fell in my lap,” Kaplan said. “It was just pure luck.”

Tame says she enjoys teaching.

“I really do. I don’t think I’m the best teacher.”

(“Yes, you are,” Kaplan said.)

“I’ve had students for years and they keep coming back,” she said.

Tame said some artists are reluctant to share all they know when they teach. That’s not her style.

“I love the fact that I can show them something they might really enjoy doing,” she said. “And I have no secrets. I tell everything. I think I do.”

Kaplan, a retired elementary school teacher from New York, nodded her head.

“She starts off introducing it as if you don’t know anything, which is the way to go,” Kaplan said. “But (she) assesses me as a learner immediately and adapts to that. She introduces me to different things every time. She comes up with different ideas, but she doesn’t push her ideas on me at all. She presents things as choices I can make with my own art.

“She’s very nurturing as a teacher.”