When this month began, I was lucky enough to sit for a few hours with a very honest woman, an artist, who was dying of cancer. Her name was Su Job. The story I wrote about her is here.

Now, as the month comes to a close, I have just gotten word that Su has died. She died, I'm told, in her loft at the Tashiro Kaplan building, at 7 pm on Christmas Day. No doubt she'd be proud to share that day of significance with Louise Bourgeois, the firecracker French American artist who was born on December 25 in Paris. Bourgeois is still living; she's just turned 97. Su wanted to go to Paris—she'd never been—before she died. She hoped to live a few months, and to make it, despite her weakened state, during that time. (I didn't doubt she would: she was a determined woman.) For all her equanimity about her life and her death, I still wish she'd gotten to do that one thing before she went.

Here is a tribute to Su from her former brother-in-law, posted just a few hours ago on the comments to the story I'd written. From everything I've heard, Su deserves many tributes.

Goodbye, Su.

She was a woman alive with possibilities and so very many of them turned into realities—We all have ideas but Su made the wildest of them happen. I was constantly astonished with the breadth of her ability to turn water and rocks into the most amazing wine and virtue—and, sometimes, even money! When she had an idea there was no stopping her—from miles away she came to her workplace via any possible transport (or none at all) and started cutting and sewing. For Su Job, all of life was a happening which she willed, built and enabled. Sharing her vitality and energy was an empowering privilege—her smile, her dance, her flowing raiment from her own hands, the colors of her life lit us all up.

I was her brother-in-law for those 10 years and am so proud to think that perhaps some of my few and paltry contributions to her life were so transmuted into the lasting beauty of her creations and spirit—no small part of which is the inspiration which she brought to so many who knew her, loved her and learned from her. In the name of all that is good and enduring and worthwhile in life, and for my brother Steve who loved and believed in her and still does—
Goodbye Su.
—sam bledsoe

^{Su Job on December 4, 2008}