Annabel Dietz Preserved Character of Chilmark

Annabel Dietz, artist and 25-year member of the Chilmark planning board died peacefully on Feb. 5, 2005 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She was 90 years old.

When she moved to Chilmark with her husband and two young children in 1957, she was a notable commercial artist. She applied her artistic talents to a variety of pursuits such as illustrations, interior design and business artwork; the mainstay of her life was the Chilmark landscape. She painted hundreds of pictures, primarily of Menemsha and Menemsha Pond, which surrounded the Dietz home on Pease's Point.

She was active in efforts to control development in Chilmark. She was elected to the Chilmark planning board in 1978, and at the time of her death had served longer than any other member.

Born Annabel Hagyard, on Oct. 11, 1914, in Seattle, Wash., she was the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Charlton Hagyard. She graduated from high school at the St. Nicholas Girls School. She also graduated from the University of Washington and later attended the Fashion Art Institute in New York, N.Y.

Her career as a fashion artist began in San Francisco during World War II where she produced fashion illustrations for I. Magnin and Roos Brothers Clothing Store. It was there that she met her future husband, Sheldon Dietz, then a Navy officer back from the Pacific Theatre, at a USO dance. They corresponded, moved to New York, and married in 1949.

After the war, she continued her career in New York as a fashion illustrator for Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor and Bonwit Teller. She also produced a witty monthly two-page spread for Seventeen magazine on teenage fashion.

She worked with Sheldon in his businesses, first designing a line of neckties and accessories, then providing the colors and designs for a line of scarves and sweaters.

They summered in Chilmark in rental cottages in Menemsha and on Stonewall Pond.

Sheldon and Annabel purchased Pease's Point in 1956 and built a modern summer house. By the simple expedient of adding a basement and furnace at the end of the summer, the family remained in Chilmark on a year-round basis. Annabel started to paint landscapes from her living room. When the children began attending the Menemsha School, she compiled sketches for a detailed oil painting of the children playing in the snowy schoolyard at recess. The painting contained tiny individual portraits of each of the 27 students (identified by a key) and hung for many years in the Chilmark Library. Another painting of the Menemsha Pond shoreline was exhibited at the 1964 New York World's Fair as part of a show of New England artists.

In 1961 Sheldon and Annabel worked together to renovate several contiguous houses and multi-bay garages near the Charles River in Cambridge. This area is now part of what is called the Marsh District Neighborhood. Having spent so much of her time in the kitchen, she decided to improve kitchen design. Her first kitchen was featured in the November 1968 issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. The converted garage was included in the 1973 Survey of Architectural History in Cambridge.

In the early 1970s she became interested in rural land use planning and she was active, along with her husband, in Chilmark's adoption of zoning and subdivision control regulations. When the Martha's Vineyard Commission was created in the mid-1970's, she was instrumental in the town's designation of hilltops and roadsides as districts of critical planning concern as well as in the creation of the site review committee to supervise those areas. She served on the site review committee for many years. She was adamant that along with Menemsha, Chilmark's stone-walled roadsides and hilltops were its greatest scenic assets and essential to the rural character of Chilmark.

Overcoming what she believed was her natural shyness, she ran for, and was elected to the Chilmark planning board in 1978 and was still a member at the time of her death. Although in her quiet way she devoted tremendous energy to a variety of Chilmark causes, none was more important to her than the original Chilmark master plan. She worked tirelessly for nearly two years in collaboration with planners, cartographers and townspeople to produce in 1985 a document which contained a wealth of topographical and historical information. It characterizes the vision of Chilmark, shared by many, that Chilmark is perfect just the way that it is.

After Sheldon's death in 1991 Annabel continued to live in Chilmark, walking up the dirt road, sketching, reading and enjoying the ever-changing views from her house.

She is survived by two children, Robbie of Chilmark and Middleburg, Va., Laurie of Cambridge and Paris, France, one granddaughter, Sophie, and a sister, Barbara Mesdag of Bainbridge Island, Wash. Her ashes will be interred in the Abel's Hill Cemetery. Her family hopes to organize a memorial show of her paintings in the spring.