Jean Slobodin

Jean Berryhill Adams Slobodin

November 25, 1923 - June 20, 2025

Jean Berryhill Adams Slobodin passed away June 20, 2025, at her home at the age of 101 and 7 months with her son and daughter by her side.

She led a remarkable life as a painter, wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend to many from humble roots. She was born at home on November 25, 1923, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the third child of eight to Inez Berryhill and Wiley Adams. Her mother received her college degree in Biology in 1912. Her father was a cabinetmaker, woodcarver, and significant artistic inspiration. Getting a good education was a mandate in her upbringing. All eight children worked through high school and college, and all received college degrees, despite the hardships of the Depression and her father's minimal income, which never included owning a vehicle, and some children having to live with relatives.

The opportunity for Jean and her siblings to attend a very progressive grade school (a teacher's training school where every teacher held a Master's Degree) made a significant impact on Jean. She found school "exciting and challenging," and her first awareness that she had artistic ability was established then. Her daughter believes this experience is why Jean had no misgivings in encouraging her children to attend alternative schooling in high school.

Jean completed High School in 1942 and immediately began college the next month to complete her degree in Library Science and Teaching at Middle Tennessee State Teacher's College (now Middle Tennessee State University ) in three years as an honor student in 1945.

With the financial help from one of her sisters, Carolyn, Jean completed several semesters at the Art Institute of Chicago. During the two summers after WWII, Jean said the most interesting job she ever had was working for the State of Tennessee as an art teacher in tiny, rural, mountainous towns, living with families. She later attended the exemplary and now iconic Art Students League in New York City. She worked various jobs by day, including in the slide library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so that she could take classes in the evening. It was because of this schedule that Jean never met another art student at the school who took classes by day at the same time, and who would later become her husband for 70 years. After several years in NYC, she then traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to work on her Master's degree in Painting at Ohio State. When she ran out of money, she began teaching high school art in Cleveland for a year, and also took classes at Case Western Reserve University.

Her next adventure was moving to Albuquerque, N.M., where her sister Carolyn was living and was attending education classes at University of New Mexico and working as a librarian.

Motivated to move to Denver, CO, where a few of her brothers were living, Jean worked as a 1st grade public school teacher. It was there she met a fellow artist and music lover, who, despite dissimilar backgrounds, found their common interests far outweighed any differences. She married Brooklyn-born Albert Slobodin a few months later, on June 19, 1954, at The Unitarian Church, which became a grounding community for her family for years to come.

She and Al purchased a new home in late 1955 and soon began a family, raising two children in the same house they lived in until their deaths.

There, Jean continued to draw and paint as well as raise her children with love and integrity. She used her creative skills as a prolific baker, canning jams and pickles, making yoghurt and bread that were a staple in her children's lunches. Her sewing skills were remarkable; she created clothes such as her wedding dress, heavy, gorgeous satin-lined velvet coats, and numerous other outfits for herself and her daughter, as well as cushions for all the furniture, on a small 1940's-era Singer sewing machine. She also knitted sweaters and hats for her family and passed that knowledge down to her daughter.

Jean continued to employ her skill as a teacher, working with Head Start for several years when her husband went back to graduate school, and also as a librarian for the City of Westminster to help finance her children's tuition at a Quaker Friends boarding high school in Canada.

With her children away, she was able to focus solely on her painting, and from 1974 and for the next forty years, Jean painted full-time. Her work was exhibited in numerous galleries and on posters and stationery cards nationwide, and she was presented with multiple awards and prizes.

Being raised in the segregated South with narrow religious views made a profound impact on Jean, and throughout her life, her keen interest in social justice in the world around her was shared with her husband and children. She was known for her unwavering dedication to the Democratic Party.

She was passionate about listening to music, especially Opera, and during her most prolific period painting; she enjoyed jazz artists such as Ornette Coleman and Thelonius Monk while working. She was also very interested in astronomy, politics, birdwatching, gardening, raising plants, most notably geraniums, nutrition, exercising, and walking. She loved to read, and subscribed to over 20 publications with her husband.

Jean continued to exercise until she was 101 ½ years old. She painted until the last 10 years of her life. She was also admittedly a "news junkie" and defended her obsession by saying, "I just want to know what's going on in the world".

She was preceded in death by all seven of her siblings and her beloved husband, Al, who died a year ago at the age of 100.

Jean was kind and generous, but her greatest affections were by far her family. She led a life of loving, learning, and a left a legacy that will endure.

She is survived by her children, Linda Jean Slobodin and Greg Slobodin ( Alison Walkley ), her grandchildren Kyla Michelle Walkley Slobodin ( Kevin Deering ), Kian Jean Walkley Slobodin ( Alberto Sanchez ), Aaron Walkley Slobodin ( Maddie Bombardier ), great-grandchildren, Jack and Wiley Deering, Flora Inés Sanchez, and over 20 nieces, nephews, great-nieces and nephews, cousins, and all her friends to whom Jean made a profound impact.