Jane Caspar’s Enduring Passion for the Arts

Jane Caspar’s Enduring Passion for the Arts

By Linda Roberts

The face on the small oil painting is that of a young woman with brown hair cut chin length, with expressive eyes that look out from the canvas with an inquisitive stare. Sitting on her sofa last month, some 60 years since the self-portrait was created, is the artist, 94-year-old Jane Caspar, who offers a perky smile and eyes that twinkle.

Jane Caspar and faithful companion Cheyenne

Photo by Linda Roberts

“Well,” she said of the painting, “it was nothing special.”

That young woman, who majored in art at Cornell University, not only kept on painting, but expanded her keen interest in the arts to music, theater, pottery, knitting, crocheting and more—creating the framework for a lifelong passion for her love of the arts.

Thanks to the efforts of several friends who hung her art, arranged her well-loved crocheted animals and filled display cases with her pottery, Caspar recently competed a showing of her work at Long Branch Historic House & Farm, which created a retrospective exhibition of her life’s work.

A life well lived describes this remarkable woman who goes about her days quietly without fanfare, and who continues to amaze and inspire others to lead their own best life.

As neighbor and poet Wendy Clatterbuck said, “Janie is the most optimistic person I’ve ever known. In seeing the best in a person, she therefore brings out a person’s best. To my mind, she’s the spiritual core of our church (Christ Episcopal). And her love of animals shows in her subjects—cows, birds, goats, cats dogs—and in her whimsical crocheted animals. I’m glad she’s my friend and neighbor.”

Caspar met and married Alan in 1948 while they were both students at Cornell—she in the arts program and he in agriculture. They came to Clarke County in 1956 when he took a position at Blandy Experimental Farm. They raised two children at their property named Hillhurst, which Jane named after her family’s farm in upstate New York.

Never far from the arts, Caspar began singing in the choir at Christ Episcopal Church, where she is a faithful member, and started the art program at Powhatan School, teaching there for 20 years.

“Many of my friends are people I taught,” Caspar said. “I just loved teaching there.”

Another love is the Winchester Celtic Circle, where Caspar plays the fiddle. Although COVID kept the group from performing for two years, it’s now back on track and Caspar will be performing at upcoming holiday performances in Winchester and Middletown. Caspar also admits she “plays a little” guitar, banjo, dulcimer and the psaltery.

While her music, painting and fiber arts are favorites, “the great love of my life was doing theater,” Caspar said. “I did just about everything behind the footlights—building and painting sets, running the lights and acting with the Blue Ridge Players…I’m not in my dancing days anymore, but I had fun doing ballet, folk dancing and the jitterbug.”

Her advice to young people looking to try something new is “don’t worry about it, just do it, get involved, and try it.”

As for her own endurance in staying involved in the arts, Caspar said, “I’m kind of a positive person, but I have had good luck…My degree qualified me for everything, but being useful. Because if there was art involved I was always in it.”

And, at 94, Jane Caspar remains involved.