Mahala Victoria Sibley

Mahala Victoria Sibley died unexpectedly in Austin on July 26, 2003, of natural causes. She was born on March 26, 1952, in Fort Stockton, Texas, as the middle child of Ft. Stockton natives Dr. D.J. and Jane Dunn Sibley. She was predeceased by her older brother Dunn Jacobi Sibley in January 1991. Her younger brother is Hiram Sibley of Alpine. She attended public schools in Ft. Stockton and St. Andrews in Austin. She also attended St. Mary’s in the Mountains in New Hampshire and the Orme School in Arizona and was graduated from Austin High. An artist and life-long patron of the arts, she received a BFA in studio art in August, 1978 from the University of Texas at Austin. She subsequently did graduate work in photography at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She was the loving mother of Shiloh Jane Sibley-Cutforth, born November 24, 1985, and Kiowa Sehoy Sibley-Cutforth, born December 20, 1986. Mahala was presented in 1971 as Diamond of the Women’s Symphony League Jewell Ball and was Bluebonnet Queen of Texas in 1972. She was presented at the Cotton Palace, The Tyler Rose Festival, the International Debutante Ball in New York, and she led the Bi-Centennial parade as Queen of the Austin-Travis County Live Stock Association riding a sterling silver saddle mounted on a palamino horse. She was a member of the Austin Art League I and the Austin Symphony. She was passionately interested in the arts, and loved her desert home in West Texas. She was a collector of contemporary Texas art. She drew and painted for many years, and rendered the environs of the desert and the mountains in hand-painted ceramic tiles, shown and displayed in Alpine and surrounding areas. She maintained a studio for her art work in Alpine for several years, and was the creator of a ceramic tile mural commissioned for the Hallie Stillwell Museum near the Big Bend National Park. She loved music and dancing. Her most abiding passion was for her daughters Shiloh and Kiowa. The girls spent most of their childhood in Alpine, Texas, and recently had moved with Mahala to Austin. Kiowa has been attending the Loomis-Chaffee school in Windsor, CT. In addition to her children, Mahala is survived by her parents, Dr. D.J. and Jane Dunn Sibley of Austin, her brother and sister-in-law, Hiram and Liz Sibley of Alpine and their 2 children, Rachel and Christopher; her sister-in-law, Jan Akers and children, Sarah Elaine Sibley and Elizabeth Victoria Sibley of Midland, and Roger Cutforth of Terlingua. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Mahala Sibley Memorial Fund, UT College of Fine Arts, Austin, Texas 78712. There will be a private burial at the Glass Mountain Ranch but the date is undetermined at this time. Arrangements by Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home, 3125 N. Lamar Blvd., Austin, Texas 78705 (512) 452-8811. You may view memorials at www.wcfish.com