John Kirsten Landgraf

John Kirsten Landgraf passed away this April at the age of 74 surrounded by his wife, children, and surviving sister, after a struggle with cancer. John was a painter and master ceramicist who devoted his professional life to art education. John was born to John and Helen (Stewart) Landgraf in 1942 while his father was stationed at Williams Field in Arizona. The family returned to Sacramento after the war and ran a detective agency, but art was their real passion. John was surrounded by art and working artists his whole life. He graduated from Encina High School and spent freshman year at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. He then attended Sacramento State College, where he played football and studied art and psychology. After college John served in the Coast Guard, patrolling the Aleutian Islands which inspired an abiding love for the sea. After leaving the service he married Ann (Tune) Landgraf in 1968 and worked for a year as the art teacher and football coach at Exeter High School in Exeter, CA, where his first child, Jago, was born. For John art was inseparable from all the other components of his life. Over the years he held fellowships and artist-in-residence positions in public schools in Sacramento, Yolo, and Amador Counties and taught art at the Sacramento and Davis Waldorf Schools. John shared his own joyful approach to creating beauty - with the emphasis on creating and doing - with thousands of children. He also created the visual arts program for the Sierra Music and Art Institute and was a board member for many years. Amador County was central to his family life and personal aesthetic. His grandparents John and Hazel (Dillard) Stewart purchased a cabin in River Pines in 1935, and John's childhood was spent hunting, fishing and exploring the California foothills, often on painting expeditions with his mother. Swimming in the Cosumnes River was one of his great joys and few places gave him as much delight as the family property along Sutter Creek. John was predeceased by his parents and his eldest sister, Christine, who was tragically taken by cancer in 1973. John is survived by his wife, Ann, his daughter, Jago, his son, John, his sister, Cathy Landgraf, and his granddaughter, Kalliope. The family founded the Christine and Helen S. Landgraf Memorial Research Fund at UC Davis in 1973, which makes annual grants to cancer researchers. The Fund is supported by the Amador Cancer Research Foundation and the family requests donations can be made in his name in lieu of flowers to: ACRF, PO Box 36, River Pines, CA 95675.