Studio Gallery warmly remembers one of our
Founding Mothers, Joy Turner Luke, who passed away in June 2023.
Image courtesy of the Luke Family; https://www.foundandsons.com/obituaries/Joy-Luke/#!/Obituary
A Message from the Gallery:
Studio Gallery is saddened to acknowledge the passing of Joy Turner Luke in June 2023. Joy Turner Luke was one of our gallery’s original “Founding Mothers.” As Washington D.C.’s longest-running artist cooperative, we honor our founders’ intent to support a community of diverse local artists and to celebrate our vibrant arts community, values Joy promoted through the gallery. Studio Gallery would certainly not be what it is today without her significant contributions, including her passion for furthering the talent of local women artists and for educating the public about art theory and the science of color.
We feel her loss deeply and extend our deepest sympathy to Joy’s family. We invite you to celebrate Joy Turner Luke’s legacy by supporting local artists and paving the way for an even more diverse and welcoming community for all artists and art lovers. You can read more about her remarkable life below.
-The Studio Gallery Board and Director
Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Joy Turner Luke
Studio Gallery’s “Founding Mothers”. Clockwise starting in the lower doorway: Bella Schwartz, Joy Turner Luke, Rose Goding, Nancy Cusick, Jennie Lea Knight, Caroline Huff, Pat Barron. Photograph by Frank Van Riper.
Studio Gallery today.
The Following biography is courtesy of the family of Joy Turner Luke:
“She was born in New York City on July 17, 1925. On her birthday, her parents agreed that she was “a pure joy”, and thus Joy Beth Turner was named, and her mother said she was a joy throughout her life. Joy’s parents, Leslie Holland Turner, and Bethel Burson Turner were native Texans, and had moved to New York City to pursue his career as a successful magazine illustrator.
As the great depression took hold, jobs for illustrators became scarce, so when Joy was 4 years old, her family, now including her younger sister Ann, left New York City and spent several years homesteading on the edge of the Purgatoire River in Colorado, or living with her grandparents in Texas.
For Joy these were formative years, as they learned to ride horses, and drive cattle. They learned Texas folk wisdom, such as placing a rope around your bedroll at night to keep snakes away. On school days in the small town of Silverton, TX, they would walk, ride in a buckboard, or on a horse, the 2 miles to school. For the rest of her life, Joy fondly remembered these times, regaling family and friends with tales from those western years. When asked where she was from, Joy would proudly say “Texas!””
Image courtesy of the Luke Family; https://www.foundandsons.com/obituaries/Joy-Luke/#!/Obituary
“By 1938, her father, having become the cartoonist for the comic strip “Captain Easy,” had moved the family to Orlando, Florida. During these years Joy developed an interest in painting. As a high school junior Joy was selected to attend Rollins College to complete her senior year and attended SMU on an art scholarship.
In 1943, while attending a tea dance in Orlando, she met the engineering officer for the 422nd Night Fighter Squadron, Lt. Ernest ‘Pete’ Luke, whose squadron was training there. They fell in love, married, and began a 68-year love story. Two weeks after they married, Pete’s Squadron was sent to the European Theater, and they did not see each other for two years.
While raising two sons she found time to continue art classes, studying at the American University in Washington D.C. She was one of the all-women founders of the Studio Gallery, where her work was exhibited and sold for years. She was also active in The Torpedo Factory art space, in Alexandria, VA.
In 1960 Joy and Pete bought an abandoned farm house built in 1915, with no utilities, located off Route 231 near Sperryville, Virginia. For 12 years the family spent weekends, holidays, and vacations modernizing the house, and built her a studio, Studio231. Pete retired as a Colonel from the Air Force in 1972, but Joy’s career was just getting started.”
“It was at Studio231 where Joy’s interest would change from painting with color, to the science of color, about which she was mainly self-taught. She began to teach classes about how the human eye sees and the brain perceives color, and how these can be manipulated. Her research, classes, articles, and lectures would lead her to work as a color consultant to various galleries, museums, and other entities, including the Cartography Division of the CIA.
She also lectured at several colleges, including Clemson University and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She became the Artists Equity Association’s representative on the National Bureau of Standards, subcommittee on Artists’ Paints, and chairman of the Inter-Society Color Council (ISCC) subcommittee on Artist Materials. In 1994 she authored The New Munsell Student Color Set.”
Images from inside of The New Munsell Color Set. Co-authored by Jim Long, Luke’s book demonstrated the impact of value, chroma, and hue on interpreting color. The book included color sheets, like these, and chips that readers had to sort, much like the process of mixing paint. Images: “Color Theory: Completed Munsell Color Charts.” Gnomicon, published on 16 September 2008, http://wiemanomicon.blogspot.com/2008/09/color-theory-completed-munsell-color.html.
“However, her most important contribution to both the arts, and the sciences, was between 1977 and 1990, as the subcommittee chairperson for the D-1 57 committee at the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). Her committee would create a series of consensus standards focusing on the safety and lightfastness of art materials. It was through her subcommittee that manufacturers of art materials connected with customers, and with State and Federal politicians, who all wanted national standards for testing the safety and quality of art materials. Her efforts were instrumental in the passage of the Federal ‘Hazardous Substance Act’ of 1988, providing professional artists, hobbyists, teachers, and parents with labels on products tested for toxicity, and lightfastness. These standards have now been adopted worldwide.
For her work in color in both the arts, and the sciences, Joy received the Gardner Award, for leading the D-1 57’s 26 subcommittees, and in 1987 was made a Fellow of the ASTM, and given their Award of Merit. In June of 2001 Joy received a U. S. patent: “Method for generating numerous harmonious color palettes from two colors.”
In 2013 Joy received the Godlove award, the most prestigious award bestowed by the Inter-Society Color Council, for her long-term contributions in the field of color.
In 2018, at the Munsell Centennial Color Symposium in Boston, at the age of 93, Joy received a lifetime award: The Munsell Centennial Award in Art for her lifetime work in advancing both art, and the science of color.”
Luke (bottom left) at her Virginia home with co-chairs of the 100 Years of Color Communication: The Munsell Symposium, Maggie Maggio and Paula Alessi in 2017. Munsell, Albert. “Interview Photo with Joy Turner Luke.” Munsell Color System, 18 November, 2017. https://munsell.com/color-blog/100-years-color-communication-munsell-symposium/joy-turner-lake-interview/.
“For all her professional accomplishments, Joy always had time to enjoy her family. Their mountain home and Studio231 became a mecca for her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, extended family, friends, and students. She was always ready for a horseback ride, a hike in the woods, interesting conversation peppered with funny quips, or in giving a lesson on color theory using a multiple slide-projector demonstration that always left viewers amazed, and questioning what they thought they knew about color.
Joy died peacefully in her sleep on June 12, 2023, one month shy of her 98th birthday. Joy was predeceased by her husband, parents, and sister Ann Turner Cook. Her younger sister Toby Tuner, of Texas, survives her.
She was a loving daughter, wife, and mother, as well as an inspiration to her family and friends. Joy will always be remembered with love and admiration, and deeply missed by her sons and their spouses: Peter and Sharon Luke of Sperryville, Virginia, and Kim and Betty Luke of Potomac, Maryland, as well as by her four grandchildren, Stephen, Michelle, Christina, and Benjamin, and 6 great-grandchildren.”