Jeanne Swanstrom

Local artist Shirley Jean “Jeanne” Swanstrom crossed into the spirit world on February 12, 2025.

Jeanne Swanström was born June 6, 1936 in Rock Springs, Wyoming, daughter of Harry and Vivian (Luce) Swanström, of Farson, Wyoming. She grew up on her parents’ ranch in the sage brush country north of Rock Springs, but she was never going to stay there. When she was young, her parents told her the gypsies who sometimes camped nearby would steal her if she didn’t behave, but they never did—to her great disappointment. She never wanted to stay in one place too long. She travelled throughout the country and lived in various places. She moved to Utah in 1959, to Nevada in 1965, to Colorado in 1968, back to Utah in 1974, and back to Colorado in 2009.

Jeanne attended grade school in a two-room schoolhouse in Farson, Wyoming and graduated high school in 1954 in Rock Springs, Wyoming as valedictorian in a class of 13. She received a full scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago, but her mother did not think it was possible to make a living as an artist. So, instead Jeanne was sent to the University of Wyoming to study Elementary Education. It didn’t work out, but after raising her four children, Jeanne went back to school. She graduated from the University of Utah in 1994 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

Jeanne has been drawing and painting since she was very young. One of her earliest memories was copying things her mother’s friend drew. Art became her life’s calling. Whenever she would take a break from her craft, she would feel the pull to create more. She was rarely without her sketchpad and always had an easel or two set up in her living room. Her interests included oils, acrylics, charcoals, multi-media, watercolors, and ceramics.

Our eccentric mother checked all the usual boxes, but her inner light always shone through. She had a boundless curiosity and an appetite for learning. She spent the majority of her adulthood exploring various career paths working as a librarian, secretary, business owner (construction and artisan), and cosmetologist, as well as selling real estate, insurance, and mutual funds. She succeeded at all, although art and gardening were her true loves.

We believe Mom might have enjoyed the camping, fishing, and hunting trips with her various husbands, but we strongly suspect those trips were merely a cover for her rescue missions. She saved countless seedlings along the dirt roads of the American West from certain death. The gardens and forests that now surround her former homes are a monument to her success. She also leaves behind many piles of rocks gathered on those trips. She touched them, so we’re obliged to regard them as heirlooms and pass them down to future generations.

She was not a Crazy Cat Lady, despite what the neighbors said, but we have been unable to count the number of stray, feral, and abandoned cats she rescued from gas stations, alleys, and roadside ditches. She occasionally re-homed them, but a surprising number chose to make their permanent home with her. She was also known to take in a racoon from time to time. She chose to stop feeding the squirrels after they disabled the wiring in her car. Her spirit animal was a black panther.

Jeanne was a member St. John’s Cathedral, Daughters of the American Revolution, Daughters of Utah Pioneers, and Art Students League of Denver. She was even a Republican in her younger days, before the Grand Old Party lost its moral center. She was never Mormon any longer than she had to be.

She is survived by children Justin Durand (Tim Johnson), of Denver, Colorado; Linda Tangren, of Payson, Utah; and Laura Ferre, of Denver, Colorado; sister Betty MacNaughtan, of Heber City, Utah; ex-husband Lawrence Ferre, of Santaquin, Utah (she divorced him; we didn’t); six grandchildren, ten great grandchildren, and four great-great grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her daughter Evonne Howery-Carlson, son-in law Tim Tangren, granddaughter Lisa Tangren, great grandson Tarin Guerrero, parents Harry and Vivian (Luce) Swanstrom, brother Wallace Swanstrom, two infant brothers, and two ex-husbands.

Mom always said funerals are for the living, not the dead. She told us to leave her body for the wolves (poor starving wolves; no one thinks about them), but we’ve chosen Plan B. There will be a funeral mass February 26 at 11 a.m. in St. Martin’s Chapel at St. John’s Cathedral, Denver, followed by interment in the All Souls’ Walk Columbarium.