Joanna Campbell Blake passed away Sunday, May 22nd in a motorcycle crash in Italy while celebrating her 39th birthday.
Blake was a Mobile native and had graduated from Auburn University with a degree in Fine Arts with a concentration in painting in 1999.
Over the years Blake has completed numerous figurative sculptors that stand in the Schermerhorn Symphony in Nashville, Tennessee and the National War World II Memorial in Washington, D.C., where she was currently living.
“She worked so hard on everything,” Giantti, friend and colleague at Kaskey Studio Inc., told WUSA9, “We’re really going to miss her for the rest of our life.”
Blake worked with the former chair of the art department, Gary Wagoner, to complete many projects around the Auburn University campus over the years.
She had created a 30-foot-long terracotta panels for the College of Science and Mathematics buildings as well as sculpting 13 scientists at the entrance of the University’s Chemistry and Biology buildings.
In an alumni spotlight interview, Blake talks about all the panels she sculpted around campus that represent a different college within Auburn for the Pedestrian Portal Project.
“The first set we created was for the Pharmacy School and since then we’ve designed and sculpted panels for the Education, Liberal Arts, COSAM, Agriculture, Architecture, and Engineering departments,” Blake said in the spotlight interview. “Auburn has such a beautiful campus and I am proud that my work is some part of it.”
Blake was working with Wagoner to create panels for the University’s Wellness Center and also in the design phase for a 100-foot-long terracotta frieze for the Performing Arts Center in Opelika, Alabama.
“It will be a good excuse to visit Auburn,” Blake said, “which always feels like home.”
Joanna Blake is survived by her husband, Ike Blake, and their daughter, Myra Blake, 5, as well as her parents, Alan Campbell and Joleen Campbell, and her brother, Alan Campbell.
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