RIP Tiffany Sedaris, 49, Somerville artist

[ron_newman]

This obituary was just brought to my attention, from a Raleigh NC newspaper:
Tiffany Joyce Sedaris

Tiffany Joyce Sedaris, 49, passed away peacefully on May 24, 2013, at her home in Somerville, Massachusetts. Tiffany was always full of life and deeply immersed in the arts, including yoga, jazz, gourmet cooking, and mixed-media sculpture. A graduate of the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, she was head pastry chef at the renowned Harvest Restaurant at Harvard Square and the Quebrada Bakery in Arlington, Massachusetts. Tiffany was a talented and accomplished artist, best known for her stained-glass mosaic sculpture, which she exhibited at Somerville'€™s Blue Cloud Gallery and at the annual Somerville Open Studios.

Her studio was open for SOS just a month ago. I wish now that I had visited it.

She had a famous-writer brother who unfortunately wrote about her in less-than-flattering ways, and against her wishes. This Boston Globe article from 2004 discusses some of that: Sister in a glass house.

I don't think I ever met her. Have any of you? Does she have a LiveJournal account here?

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I met her, though I did not know who she was until just now.

We met a few times trash picking, when I lived back on Gilson; there were 4 or 5 people who I regularly saw when I went out because we did the same basic area (Cedar to Central, Broadway to Somerville). You can be a little wary when you run into others, partly because you just never know, and partly because sometimes they seek the same things you seek... But we talked a little, since what I look for are wooden things (chairs, frames, bookcases) to take home and repair and refinish, and she was seeking dishware and glass. You get to know the others - she helped me get a heavy nightstand she saw me struggling with home, and once I sent her up to Willow because I had seen 3 boxes of glassware that way.

I have never gotten to refinishing that night stand, though I still have it; it's beside my bed right now. It has beautiful lines, but it hasn't told me what it wants me to do to it. Maybe I'll do a mosaic on the top for the artist who helped me keep it.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

That's very unfortunate. :-(

It's weird, I've read several of his books and he's only mentioned her in passing there. It could be he's simply never collected those essays.

[ron_newman]

That June 2004 article mentions Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim which was published a few months earlier. Googling for

"David Sedaris" Tiffany

led me (on the second page of results) to a Google Books excerpt which I would have found mortifying if it had been written about me.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Ah, right, now I remember.

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

Heh, when I read that (in the book a few years ago), I felt like I would be mortified to do the writing!

[bostonartist.livejournal.com]

I knew Tiffany. I first met her when I was hired to photograph her artwork. She was an amazing / eccentric person. She had lots of friends in Somerville. Most of her artwork was made from found / broken objects she found in the trash around town. She lived her art to the max. I'm saddened to hear she is gone.

~ Jeff

http://artslidesboston.com

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

That's very sad! I never got to meet her. It's always chilling to see when someone exactly my age dies. I'd just finished her brother's latest collection. I'm glad that he honored her request not to be written about in it.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, her preference was that he not write about her.

Sad that she is dead.

[dial-zero.livejournal.com]

That's really lovely, thanks for sharing that.

[karenjulip.livejournal.com]

My husband and I met her a few years ago at I think the Burren. She was very eccentric (and very tipsy) and hit on my husband (boyfriend then). It was sweet and harmless and we thought she was really cool. She told funny stories - one about being in a mental institution as a kid and the dog she and the kids had there. As others said, she didn't seem too thrilled about her famous siblings. We'll really miss her. We talk about meeting her every now and then. RIP Tiffany.

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

I met Ms. Sedaris at SOS several years ago; she was showing in the lobby at the building with the Au Bon Pain. I found her glass work enthralling, and had thought from time to time of contacting her to see what she was currently working on. I remember in particular a piece that she had created by glueing shards of window glass to a storm window, creating a transparent image of a woman in a billowing skirt. It was beautiful, but also deeply disturbing because every shard was razor-sharp; it was both comforting and dangerous at once.

We talked for quite a while. This was before David Sedaris was quite so famous, but I had read a couple of his books and I asked if she happened to be related. She allowed that she was, and that she was proud of her brother's success but that "he has his memories of our childhood, and I have mine." When I later read his essay that mentioned her by name, I recalled that conversation, and wondered what she thought of it.

I'm so sorry she's gone. I hope some of her work is in places where it will be treasured.

[myprettycabinet.livejournal.com]

According to this interview with David Sedaris from a few weeks ago, she committed suicide: http://www.uitzendinggemist.nl/afleveringen/16084252

[ron_newman]

This is a 20+ minute video in the Dutch language. Do you recall about where in the video he mentions Tiffany?

[myprettycabinet.livejournal.com]

The interview itself is in English. It's at 19:36.

[ron_newman]

Thank you. It is upsetting to listen to him say that he had not spoken to Tiffany in eight years before she killed herself.

[myprettycabinet.livejournal.com]

Tiffany's brother, David, has also now written a piece for the New Yorker about her called, "Now We Are Five (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/10/28/131028fa_fact_sedaris?currentPage=all)". Here's an excerpt:

The day before we arrived at the beach, Tiffany’s obituary ran in the Raleigh News & Observer. It was submitted by Gretchen, who stated that our sister had passed away peacefully at her home. This made it sound as if she were very old, and had a house. But what else could you do? People were leaving responses on the paper’s Web site, and one fellow wrote that Tiffany used to come into the video store where he worked in Somerville. When his glasses broke, she offered him a pair she had found while foraging for art supplies in somebody’s trash can. He said that she also gave him a Playboy magazine from the nineteen-sixties that included a photo spread titled “The Ass Menagerie.”

[ron_newman]

And yet, there are no comments on that News & Observer obituary. I didn't see any when I first looked at it in June, either.

[myprettycabinet.livejournal.com]

I didn't think there were either, but it turns out the New & Observer uses a guestbook website, so here are 43 comments to her obituary: Tiffany's guestbook (http://www.legacy.com/guestbooks/newsobserver/guestbook.aspx?n=tiffany-sedaris&pid=165129567&view=1#sthash.ZSypumXJ.dpbs) (I have yet to see anything about glasses. I did find this comment (http://www.thesomervilletimes.com/archives/39327#comment-45151870213197181) about her looking for colored glass for her art, but that's not really the same thing).

[ron_newman]

and definitely no comment about Playboy magazine.

If Tiffany is still sentient somewhere beyond death, I don't think she would be pleased by David's essay.

[myprettycabinet.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I have to agree. But we can't really presume to know much at all about their relationship, and I guess this is his way of dealing with their complicated past. To be honest, the essay is much nicer to her than his other, older stories about her. :/