Artist, activist, prolific essayist and former Bay News columnist, Ann Calhoun, lost her battle with pancreatic cancer on July 9, 2015. She was 72.
Ann was born in Sacramento on April 6, 1943, to Marvin and Mary Hughes. The family moved to Coachella Valley when Ann was 5-years old and she attended school there through high school, majoring in art during her high school years. She received many awards for her art and was class salutatorian when she graduated from Coachella Valley High School in 1961.
After high school Ann attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. During that time she met a soldier named, David Calhoun, and married him in 1965. David was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, where they lived until David left the army.
The couple returned to Los Angeles, and David became a county probation officer. Ann stayed home and became a gourmet cook. After David’s sudden death at age 39, Ann decided to go back to college at CSU Long Beach. She earned a Master of Arts degree in 1982.
Ann became manager of the Simard Haim Gallery in Los Angeles (since closed). The gallery specialized in works by emerging artists from culturally diverse Southern California. One of the artists featured by the gallery was John Valadez, a graduate of CSU Long Beach.
Ann purchased a work by John called, “La Butterfly,” now a nationally famous painting that has been shown all over the U.S. Ann bequeathed “La Butterfly” to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Eventually Ann tired of living in Los Angeles, left the art scene and moved to Los Osos. Switching careers, she became a writer. She helped to start a local newspaper called Bear Facts in 1985, as a writer and editor. A few years later, Ann began writing a column, “Calhoun’s Can(n)ons,” which was first published by the (now defunct) Morro Bay Sun Bulletin weekly.
After 1992, the column continued in the various resurrections of the Los Osos Bay News, Bay Breeze, Bay News (again), and Bay News-Tolosa Press. In 2005, the Can(n)on was added to the Central Coast NewsMission blog site. The address is calhounscannon.blogspot.com. Ann’s final entry was posted on June 17.
Ann became very active in her community and was more than generous in helping others. She helped to paint three of the Los Osos murals, became an Elfin Forest Weed Warrior for Small Wilderness Area Preservation and joined in many other community projects.
Her greatest loves were her dogs: a clan of basenjis, three greyhounds, a whippet and a sloughi. Seeing the need for an off-leash dog park, Ann, Nancy Conant and other like-minded dog lovers founded Parks4Pups, a non-profit organization with a mission to encourage dog parks. Their first success was the off-leash County Parks dog park at El Chorro Regional Park. Other dog parks followed.
Ann is survived by her sister, Joan Hughes, of Fresno. There will be a potluck celebration of Ann’s life at the Los Osos Community Center on Saturday, Aug. 1 from 2-6 p.m. Please, no flowers. Donations in memory of Ann to SLO-4-PUPS will be gratefully received and will support dog parks.
Make checks payable and mail to: SLO-4-PUPS/SLO POST, P.O. Box 573, Morro Bay, CA 93443. For details about donating, call 235-5949.
