Jacqueline Frances (Lair) Baer died peacefully at her home in Vineyard Haven on Nov. 25, 2023. She was 90.
Jackie was born in Oak Bluffs to H. Stanton (“Stan”) Lair and Phyllis Lightowler, and aside from a few years immediately following her 1954 marriage to Eugene (“Gene”) Baer, she lived her entire life in Vineyard Haven. She was an artist and professional photographer.
Jackie grew up on Skiff Avenue in the 1930s and ’40s, an only child and a ninth-generation Islander. Her father was a plumber and a modelmaker for the Van Ryper ship model company. She graduated from Tisbury High School with the class of 1950.
After high school, Jackie attended the Massachusetts School of Art and the Boston Museum School, where she roomed at the Fenway Student House. It was here she met her roommate and lifelong friend, Nancy (Marchand) Kingsley, whom she would later introduce to the Island.
Jackie was a lifelong artist, and mastered every medium she dove into: ceramics, photography, drawing, painting, dollmaking, digital art, and in her last years, elaborately beaded mannequins and sculptures. As a professional photographer, she chronicled weddings, families, events, and generations of senior portraits, taking many in the home studio she built on Tashmoo Avenue, together with her own family, travels, and creative projects.
Jackie loved antique dolls, art, curiosities, reading, travel, dump-picking, yard sales, and bottle-digging. She loved animals, and doted over her many dogs, cats, fish, rabbits, guinea pigs, and other critters. One of her favorite outings in her later years was the West Tisbury Dumptique. Jackie and Gene joked that when her day came, she would be carried off to “the Great Dumptique in the Sky.” We trust she’s there now.
Jackie was an early adopter of CB radio, mopeds, synchronized slide projection, the internet, Photoshop, Facebook, and other new technologies that caught her fancy. Her photographic portraits of the Wampanoag elders became a permanent exhibit in the Aquinnah Cultural Center, and her work documenting Island farms became the widely celebrated video “Farm Trails.” In recent years, her ornate beaded mannequins were exhibited at Kara Taylor Gallery, the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, Featherstone Gallery, and the Cleopatra Lounge.
Jackie was predeceased by her parents; by her husband, Gene; by her aunts Fanny (Lair) Downs, Muriel (Lightowler) Brown, and May (Lightowler) Woolaver; and by her uncles Carl Lair, Ralph Lair, and Bert Lightowler. She is survived by four children:, Justin Baer and his wife Jeannie of Silver Spring, Md.; Jon Baer of Vineyard Haven; Gretchen Baer of Bisbee, Ariz.; and Chris Baer and his wife Janice of Oak Bluffs; together with grandchildren Kara, Lissy, Christian, and Jack; and five great-grandchildren, Isla, Matilda, Rukmini, Felicity, and Josephine. She also leaves her dearest childhood friends, Janet (Frieh) Cunningham and Barbara (Frieh) Brunelle, of Florida, and Geraldine Averill of Vineyard Haven.
A memorial service will be held at a date to be announced.
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