JAMES WILTON GRIGSBY, Performer, Educator And Landscape Designer, 61

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James Wilton Grigsby was a performer who knew how to make an entrance.
He would show up onstage in a business suit and camouflage makeup, or
in an outfit of contrasting plaids decorated with sequins. Sometimes
he'd wear only a podium affixed around his middle. As one of Chicago's
best-known performance artists, Mr. Grigsby was always getting
attention. "But he wasn't just a clown. There was always a message,"
said Craig Bergmann, his life partner for nearly 22 years. Mr.
Grigsby, 61, also an arts educator, choreographer and landscape
designer, died Tuesday, March 19, in Evanston Hospital of
complications from surgery. He earned a bachelor's degree in music
composition in 1962 from Western Illinois University. Mr. Grigsby
studied music at the Juilliard School, dance at the Martha Graham
Studio, and sculpture and design at the Illinois Institute of
Technology. In 1974, Mr. Grigsby took a job as art educator and
director of the Saturday art program at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago. A course catalog from those days described his
classes as breaking "the traditional barriers of arts education by
creating multimedia, multiarts, multiage settings." In 1977, Mr.
Grigsby became one of "the founding fathers" of Columbia College's
master's program in interdisciplinary arts, said department chairwoman
Suzanne Cohen. He taught there for 10 years, mostly performance art.
Cohen called him "the best teacher I ever knew." "He had this way of
bringing out all of the best in his students. It was a magic gift,"
she said. Reviewers praised Mr. Grigsby's "crackling dry delivery" and
called him "wondrous and ever-amusing. . . . Chicago's sly court
jester of performance art." He was noted as one of the genre's
visionaries in a Museum of Contemporary Art exhibit called "Arts in
Chicago, 1945-95." In the early 1980s, he and his partner formed Craig
Bergmann Landscape Design. Their work--unusual, richly textured
plants, elaborate ornamentation and an emphasis on making the design
appropriate to the environment--has been featured in garden books and
in magazines. As their success grew, Mr. Grigsby shifted his "theater
influence" to garden design, Cohen said.

"It wasn't about landscaping," Cohen said. "It was about inventing,
creating these spectacular environments. They're astounding fairy-tale
places." A friend for 35 years, Cohen described Mr. Grigsby as a
caring man who knew how to enjoy life. He would take her to the
circus, she said, and they would cheer as loudly as the youngsters in
the audience. Once, when she was seriously ill, "he was there every
night to bring me chopped liver sandwiches or balloons or whatever I
needed." Bergmann said his partner was "a private person" who
demonstrated a sense of humor to friends. He was a man who appreciated
people for who they were.

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