Kay Wagener-Mathewes Holz

 The Carmel Pine Cone described her home as "artwork in every room. Her walls display whimsically colored drawings and multi-media montages. Tables and chairs are crowded with self-illustrated children's books and novels she has authored. Her closets hold one-of-a-kind wearable art_. dresses, hats, vests and other garments she has created for models to wear on runways or glitzy fashion shows."

Kay described her artistic focus in the Charleston Courier: "I have spent much of my life exploring boundaries, what has to be separated in art and in life and what cannot be separated. Every artist must answer this question for themselves."

Kay published two novels:

‘Picture this:

Christmas in Santa Fe, snow blue-white, air thin and dry, your eyes able to see every nuance of tint in the sky…We are gathered to celebrate Christmas in an ancient adobe once owned by two Russian pianists…We are friends and not friends. We love each other and don’t. But it is Christmas, a time of forgiveness and rising expectations…

" His kiss was like bumping together two logs. The most totally chaste kiss I'd ever received, including that of my grandfather. I had a moment, (not one of my best) thinking he's wearing a yellow sweater, not a color I would have chosen for him.

"The last time I was in this Episcopal Church I had been the bride in a particularly large Southern wedding where everything was done right...except for the choice of bridegroom...The sermon was as silly as the minister, who cannot resist inserting his possibly very nice but conventional family into every liturgical metaphor...I sit in the very last row so I can leave if I have to. I look out the multi paned windows to dogwoods in bloom, azaleas in every shade of peach and fuchsia, and weeping willows sheltering the churches' garden. How ironic is it that everything is infused with new life at the very time my heart is filled with sadness. A week ago Fred called me home. The cancer is growing and about to engulf this now frail man. 'I think I need you now',"

These books are available by mailing a check of at least $25.00 made out to the charity of your choice to Kay Holz Books, PO Box 3031, Carmel, CA 93921. Be sure to provide your shipping address.

"I heartedly recommend consideration of Blue Tara for production in your theater. it grew out of a set of enchanting drawings that portrayed the whimsical and humorous side of the very personal nature of learning what sustains each of us in our search for "home". Kay expanded the "search for home" theme in the drawings to fit a dramatic format without losing the joy of the work"

One of the most memorable pieces was her Christmas Coat for Harriet the Homeful Person

" Last Christmas Eve I came out of the Winter Garden Theater in New York after seeing Cats. It had started to snow, and I decided to walk the 12 blocks to the hotel. Just beyond the marquee lights, I saw a woman twirling in the snow, involved in a dance so graceful. so beautiful...all alone...and singing. She was singing the tunes I had just heard, out of synch, and overlapping each other as in a collage.  She wore an exquisite coat fashioned by bits and pieces of lace and brocade. For warmth, they were glued to layered pages of the New York Times.

I opened my purse. I looked for a jar or something to show my appreciation for her performance. She stopped me with a look that dared me to come any closer and violate the distance between her and her audience. Still staring at me, she ended her performance and backed into a small tent behind her. she pulled down the flap. On it she had embroidered Harriet the Homeful Person."

Kay’s wearable art was collected nationally and was featured in exhibitions in California, Tennessee and New Mexico. Mary Ewing, a well-known collector of indigenous art clothing and a part time professor at the University of Tennessee shepherded Kay into her first museum shows at the Knoxville Museum of Art and the State Museum of Art in Nashville.

Among her happiest times was living in Santa Fe, She began her novels, had her play produced, and captured the spirit and joy of Sante Fe in her drawings.

Expression of her multiple artistic talents began in the Bay Area. They took root in Knoxville and blossomed in Sante Fe.

Aline Brandauer, Curator at the Museum of New Mexico, chose her wearable art for exhibition at the annual Artists of New Mexico exhibit. The Bank of America in downtown Santa Fe gave her a solo exhibit of her New Mexican “whimsically colored” drawings in their lobby. She volunteered to make wearable art costumes for other productions produced by Theaterwork. She had a studio in Tesuque. She traded drawings for exquisite hand blown glass bowls, vases and glasses made by Charley Minor at the Tesuque Glass Works.

Kay resided in Charleston, New Orleans, Berkeley, Knoxville and Santa Fe. Her last 25 years were in Carmel and the Monterey Peninsula.

Kay graduated from high school at the Ashley Hall School for Girls in Charleston. She earned her BA from the College of Charleston. After college, she was a social worker for Charleston County focusing on people living on the barrier islands outside Charleston.

After about three years, Kay decided to join her friend Joannie Hitt from Ashley Hall who had moved to New Orleans. Kay thought of it as a “tryout”. She attempted to mix blues singing at night and department store community relations during the day. It did not work out well. Joannie Hitt had moved to San Francisco. She told Kay to come and work with her at the Social Services Department. The intractable problems of dealing with people on street drugs disheartened Kay. She decided to leave to attend the Graduate School of Journalism at UC-Berkeley.

Don and Kay met on their first day there in 1969. They were married on July 18, 1970.

Kay did free-lance writing after graduate school. She began working for the Marin County Probation Department until the forces of “anything is possible” in the Bay Area in the 1970's threw her into her artistic future.

She moved to Knoxville because Don could work for DOE in Oak Ridge and she could be close to her aging parents in Charleston.

They moved to Santa Fe after her parents died. They had learned that Sante Fe was an artistically conscious community-artists were woven into the fabric of daily life.

They moved back to California because of Don’s work. They felt serendipitous grace firsthand because Don was assigned to Monterey.

Kay (and Don) rescued four St, Bernards while in California, Knoxville, Santa Fe and Carmel.

In Knoxville, Kay was the Volunteer Coordinator for HABIT-Human and Animal Bond in Tennessee. She assisted about 70 volunteers providing the comfort of animal contact through weekly visitations to home and facility-bound patients. Kay took Cameo, her sweet St. Bernard who, thankfully for the patients, did not drool.

In Carmel, Kay served on the town’s Historic Resources Review Board, finished two novels, and cared for two St. Bernard rescues. She drew ‘whimsically colored” depictions of Carmel.

Kay loved See's Candies. She picked out a pound of her favorites as her gift every birthday, anniversary and Christmas.

In February, she was weak and had trouble swallowing. Don brought her a piece cut up in smaller pieces. She tried to eat it and then spit it out saying, "This is too much chocolate".

She died a month later at home and in peace   Her husband, family members and the nurse from the Hospice of the Central Coast by her side. 

She is survived by Don Holz, her sisters in law, Karen Hartzler and Susan Mathewes and by nieces and nephews in Wisconsin and South Carolina. Her parents, Christopher and Ruth Mathewes and her brother Kit Mathewes, have died. 

Kay was a member of All Saints Episcopal Church in Carmel.

In Jesus’ name, help someone who is less fortunate today. Do it again tomorrow.

Don feels her kindness and love with every breath he takes. Her spirit is close. They were married 55 years.