Remembering Jane Gallagher, Portola Valley artist, volunteer Remembering Jane Gallagher, Portola Valley artist, volunteer (March 17, 2004)

Jane Gallagher, Portola Valley artist and a community volunteer, will be remembered by friends and family during a tribute at 1 p.m. Sunday, March 21, in the Historic Schoolhouse at Portola Valley Town Center.

Her friends on the Portola Valley Cultural Arts Committee are planning a reception immediately after the tribute. Some of Ms. Gallagher's paintings of favorite landscapes and pen-and-ink drawings will be on display.

A founder of the town's Cultural Arts Committee, Ms. Gallagher, 73, died January 17 after a brief illness.

"Jane certainly was a key part of the fabric of this community in so many ways," said Nancy Lund, a friend and Portola Valley historian. "She was always very positive and upbeat, looking for solutions."

Ms. Gallagher would pitch in and help on various projects, including the rehabilitation of the 1909 schoolhouse. It was Ms. Gallagher's idea to create a docent program to give tours of the historic building so that townspeople who had paid for the project could see what their money bought, said Ms. Lund. She also was involved in many Town Center committees and chosen as the town's volunteer of the year.

"Even though Jane called herself a 'closet artist' because she liked to paint alone, she was the most sharing artist, giving of her time and skills with everybody," said friend and photographer Susan Thomas.

Ms. Gallagher donated her art for environmental causes, such as the Portola Valley Millennium Open Space Campaign and the Committee for Green Foothills, for which she served on the board.

"Art has always been the focus of Jane's life," said her sister Sally Sellar Reed of Ross.

Ms. Gallagher worked as a publication specialist/graphic designer at General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Vidya Division, Iteko Corp., and then Stanford Research Institute. Upon her retirement from SRI in 1987, she pursued her love of art, and became a noted artist in Northern California.

"Most impressive is that Jane knew how to support herself as an artist," said Ms. Thomas, noting that the creative and business sides of her brain were equal.

For many years, Ms. Gallagher was involved in the Portola Valley Art Gallery, an artists' cooperative originally housed in the "Little Red Schoolhouse" and now located in a former classroom wing at Town Center. She belonged to the Menlo Park Water Color Society, the Santa Clara Valley Water Color Society, International Artists Society and the Society of Western Artists.

Ms. Gallagher's dreams of having her landscape paintings and drawings published in a book came true in 1996. Her "California -- in Solitude and Silence," a collection of 31 landscapes in color, mostly local vistas, was published with gratitude to Rodney Smith of Portola Valley, who, she said, "found my work in a backwoods gallery."

Her paintings and sketches, along with works of other Portola Valley artists and photographers, illustrate the book, "Life on the San Andreas Fault, A History of Portola Valley," written by Nancy Lund and Pamela Gullard and published in 2003.

Born March 23, 1930, in Palo Alto, she was the daughter of Wilfrid and Irene Cullison Sellar, who owned Sellar's Tire Shop on Alma Street. The family moved to Napa and a life of farming in 1936.

During high school, Jane contracted tuberculosis and was confined to bed for three and one-half years until she was cured at a sanitarium in Santa Rosa, said her sister.

Ms. Gallagher studied art and majored in English at San Jose State, where she met and married John Gallagher. They and daughter Michelle moved in 1958 to Portola Valley, where she designed their home.

"Her home was the warmest and coziest home and always open to friends," said Ms. Thomas. She recalled her friend's pleasure in watching birds fly to the courtyard aviary and being surrounded by her dogs, raccoons and other wildlife.

Ms. Gallagher is survived by her daughter Michelle Gallagher of Sacramento, her sister Sally Sellar Reed of Ross, nieces, nephews, grandnephews and friends. Mr. Gallagher died in 1965.

Friends of Ms. Gallagher on the Cultural Arts Committee have established the Jane Gallagher Memorial Arts Fund, in care of Bank of America, 2180 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park 94025; attention Nicole. For information, phone Sue Chaput at 854-1312.

The family requests that in lieu of flowers, memorial contributions be made to the Jane Gallagher Memorial Arts Fund or the Committee for Green Foothills.

E-mail a friend a link to this story.