Pach, Constance Barnard 103, a sculptor whose work is in private collections in the United States, Canada and Japan, died June 5, 2023, in Needham, MA.
Mrs. Pach, known to her friends as Connie, lived for many years in Dover, Mass., where her studio looked out across a woodland pond. She worked in clay, stone, wood, welded materials and the lost wax process for creating bronzes. Well into her 80s, visitors might find her in the garage, welding mask on and wielding an acetylene torch as sparks flew.
Her pieces were exhibited at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and at the Museum of Fine Arts, both in Boston. She did commissioned pieces for private and public institutions such as the Cox Cancer Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut. She also sculpted trophies for Harvard and Radcliffe track competitions.
At the time of a retrospective of her work in 2007 at the Vose Galleries of Boston, Mrs. Pach said, “My work begins in response to an idea sparked by a movement, a line, a shape and a form taken from nature, plants and human forms—and from artifacts from ancient civilizations. … I hope the viewer feels both motion and emotion.”
In a brochure accompanying the retrospective, the owners of the Vose Galleries said they were attracted by the range of Mrs. Pach’s work. “Because she has worked alone most of her professional life, her work cannot be categorized, setting it apart from the imitative work which we see so often across the country.”
Mrs. Pach was born Oct. 27, 1919, in Brooklyn, N.Y., the only child of Seymour and Eunice Fuller Barnard. She was educated in progressive schools including the City and Country School. She had memories of hearing the trucks of Prohibition era rumrunners rumbling in the dark up from the Rhode Island beaches where her family vacationed in the summer.
She graduated from Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., and returned to New York City where she taught preschoolers at the Bank Street School. She married the late Stewart Warner Pach in 1942 and through his work lived in Dedham, Winnetka, Ill., and Dover.
Mrs. Pach possessed grace and style that warmly engaged those she knew and projected a personal elegance. These qualities were undergirded by a strong independence of spirit and thought passed down from her mother who wrote and edited for The New York Times in the 1920s and 1930s and her grandmother Harriet Fuller who was one of the first women to graduate from Boston University and was active in women’s rights. She was surrounded by creative people including her parents, who were writers, and an aunt who was an impressionist painter.
She never gave herself enough credit despite her wide-ranging intellect and understanding of, as she said, “the human condition—love, joy, misery and contemplation.” She was a devoted mother who encouraged her children to explore and make their own decisions, though not without sometimes subtly letting her feelings be known. There were strict standards that served her well and to different degrees rubbed off on her offspring to their benefit.
She played in her last tennis game at 90, skied for many years, boated with her late husband along the New England coast and muttered about the state of her golf game long after she had stopped playing. She traveled widely including a trip to Russia some 60 years after first going there with her mother who was on assignment for the Times. She particularly relished the meetings of her book club where she said, “we laughed the whole time.”
One of her greatest joys was inviting her grandchildren into her studio to begin their creative lives with lumps of clay, pieces of wax, or paper, pencils and paints. They painted, drew and sculpted under her encouraging and loving eye. Never once did she ask, “What’s that?”
She is survived by her three children, Sandra Zebal of Morrisville, Vt., Nicolette Pach and her husband Stephen Kunken of Huntington Bay, N.Y., and Peter B. Pach and his wife Kathleen Megan of Middle Haddam, Ct.; six grandchildren, Christopher (Jenn) and Timothy Zebal, Charlie (Nikki) and Jake Kunken, Nell and Samuel Pach (fiancee Aida Roman); and five great grandchildren; Jackson and Olivia Zebal, Lila, Ciara and Chase Kunken. She was predeceased by her husband, Stewart Warner Pach, her brother-in-law, G. Vincent Pach Jr., and son-in-law, Bradley H. Zebal.
A private burial service will be held at a family plot in Pound Ridge, N.Y. Donations in her memory may be made to City and Country School, 146 West 13th St., New York, N.Y., 10011.