Jan Wilson Kaufman -- noted artist who attended UC Davis
Delfin Vigil, Chronicle Staff Writer
Dec. 13, 2004

Jan Wilson Kaufman, one of the first art majors to graduate from UC Davis who became an award-winning artist, died Dec. 5 of cancer and pneumonia at a hospital in Oakland. She was 69.

Ms. Kaufman was born in Palmdale (Los Angeles County) on the family's turkey and chicken ranch. She enrolled at UC Davis after graduating from Antelope Valley High School in Palmdale. In 1957, she became one of the university's first art major graduates.

Ms. Kaufman went on to study art at UC Berkeley, at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and at Oxford University in England.

"She was exotic, incredibly well-read, creative and loved to laugh," remembered her former husband, Stewart "Bud" Kaufman.

"Jan was absolutely genuine. There wasn't a phony bone in her body."

Her art, which included painting, installations and photography, has been exhibited in Germany, Emeryville, Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco.

Her awards include the 1994 and 1995 Sacramento State Fair Award of Merit; Festival of the Lake Staff Award for Photography; and the Ansel Adams Center Friends of Photography Award.

She retired recently from the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley.

Her love of literature led her to become editor of the Argus Intelligencer & Wheat Growers Gazette, the quarterly publication of the Blandings' Castle Chapter of the Bay Area P.G. Wodehouse Society, an international association dedicated to the comic novelist, poet and playwright, Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.

At the time of her death, she was president of the U.S. Wodehouse Society.

Ms. Kaufman is survived by her sisters, Nancy Ives of Taipei, Taiwan, and Harriet Calverley of Meridian, Idaho.

Services will be private.

Memorial contributions can be made to the American Cancer Society or the Friends of the Berkeley Library.