Obituary of Mark Kuhn

Newsday.com Mark Kuhn, Huntington Bay artist, dies of ALS at 57 BY KATHLEEN KERR kathleen.kerr@newsday.com March 6, 2009 Mark Kuhn, a painter and sculptor who loved jazz, died Wednesday after a valiant race against time to finish a group of paintings he called "The Lifeline Series."Kuhn, 57, of Huntington Bay, died after battling Lou Gehrig's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He kept painting until shortly before his death despite the physical impediments posed by the disease.Kuhn's "Lifeline Series" - featured in a Newsday story just last Sunday - is scheduled for a July exhibit at the Art League of Long Island in Dix Hills. The show will go on."He has enough for a full show," Kuhn's wife, Donna Simonetti, said yesterday. "He left one unfinished painting and one blank canvas."Kuhn was born in Minneapolis on June 18, 1951, and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in fine arts in 1975. He started painting in high school and took up sculpture after moving to Long Island 19 years ago. Kuhn taught drawing and painting at the Art League.Simonetti said Kuhn, who played the saxophone in high school, started playing the bass guitar about seven years ago when he received one as a gift from a dying friend."He approached it with a passion as he did many things," Simonetti said. "He definitely traveled to his own drummer."After receiving the guitar, Kuhn and some friends formed a rock band called The Barking Men. The band performed at Huntington's Summer Arts Festival last year.Kuhn especially admired the work of the Swiss painter Paul Klee and of jazz musician Miles Davis. And he enjoyed returning to Minnesota to visit musician friends there but tried to avoid the northern snows."He despised the Minnesota winters," Simonetti said.Lynn Gray, a drawing and painting professor at the University of Minnesota who taught Kuhn and later became his friend, described his work as "exceptional.""He had a profound passion for his work," Gray said. "He was rebellious and at the same time committed. He had this unpretentious way of wanting to get to know people."In addition to his wife, Kuhn is survived by a daughter, Paige, and a son, Bennett, both of Huntington Bay; his mother, Kathryn Kuhn of Minneapolis; a brother, Matthew Kuhn of Corcoran, Minn.; and two sisters - Gabriel Ross of St. Paul, Minn., and Georgia Kuhn of Coon Rapids, Minn.A funeral Mass for Mark Kuhn, a Huntington Bay artist who died Wednesday, will be offered at 10:30 a.m. Monday at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Roman Catholic Church in Centerport. A wake is planned for Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. at Connell Funeral Home in Huntington Station Last year, Paige and Bennett Kuhn formed a team to walk in an annual ALS fundraising event. The Kuhns request donations to the ALS Association in lieu of flowers. Information can be found at web.alsa.org/goto/markkuhn.