(1934 – 2022) A leading light of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship for many years, past president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, and an accomplished artist, Susan Jacobs Lockhart died at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 22. Susan dedicated herself to living, enriching, and preserving the legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright. For many, she embodied it and its values. Her involvement with Wright began at an early age. Born in Milwaukee on November 19, 1934, her childhood was spent in Madison, where her parents built the first of two Frank Lloyd Wright homes. The Jacobs House of 1936-37 was the first of Wright's Usonian houses and is now on UNESCO's World Heritage List. The equally innovative second Jacobs House, where Susan spent her teenage years, was built on a circular plan around a sunken garden in Middleton, Wisconsin, in 1946-49, and is considered a precursor of sustainable design. Upon graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1953 with a degree in Art Education, she moved to New York to study music and work for Alfred Knopf. Wright invited her, and her husband David Wheatley, a former Taliesin apprentice, to join the Fellowship in 1957. From 1958 until 2002 Susan actively participated in Fellowship life in both Wisconsin and Arizona, where she and her second husband, Kenn Lockhart, built a cottage in the desert above Taliesin West. Susan served on the Fellowship's senior teaching faculty, directed the bi-annual Taliesin Day Symposium and was Program Coordinator for arts and cultural events, pianist for the Taliesin chamber group, and lead dancer in the Taliesin Festival of Music and Dance. She was arguably the most prominent face of Taliesin to the outside world, connecting people to the community and vice versa. She served on the board of Jazz in Arizona and the Scottsdale Arts & Culture Visiting Committee. In the 1980s, she became senior graphic designer for Taliesin Architects and was responsible for a remarkable suite of designs for Phoenix's Arizona Biltmore Hotel. Her own art, including sculpture and architectural glass, both leaded and sandblasted, hand-painted wood Plate Art, and porcelain and stoneware place settings for Edith Heath and Tampopo, featured abstract geometric patterns based on nature. emphasizing the importance of light and a deeply spiritual expression. A retrospective of her art was published in the Journal of Architecture + Design in 2019. Susan joined the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy board in 1996 and left the Fellowship in 2003 to live in Cambridge and France with her third husband, Neil Levine. She served as president of the Conservancy from 2009 to 2011 and became the first executive editor of the Save Wright magazine, which she revamped and expanded into new territories. She also designed the Conservancy’s glass Wright Spirit Award, given annually to recognize individuals and organizations that have worked to preserve Wright's legacy. Most recently she co-authored a book to appear later this year titled Wright's Jacobs Houses: Experiments in Modern Living, recalling her experience growing up in the two houses and the influences that had on her life. Susan's drawings and papers have been promised to the Organic Architecture + Design Archives in Chandler, Arizona. She is survived by her husband, her step-daughter, Leslie Bisharat, of Granite Bay, California, and her step-son, Brian Lockhart, of Tucson. Memorial services will be held in Scottsdale and Madison.

Published in The Arizona Republic