Connie Sue Maxey Payne died February 6th at Owensboro Regional Hospital after a long illness. She was 76. A native of Owensboro, she filled her life with accomplishment and adventure that took her from here to New York and New England, to Berkeley, Hawaii, and the islands of the South Pacific.
In Owensboro, she will be remembered from the ’80s for her hairstyle salon, Connie’s Sheer Designs & Boutique. Friends and classmates of her sons, Sam and Ashley, will remember their beautiful mom.
In her fifties, Connie switched careers from being a mother and business owner to becoming a successful artist. A triggering event was a visit to her brother Bill Maxey in Pago Pago, American Samoa. Connie would return to Samoa several times before settling there in 2001. During that interim, she returned to college, at Brescia, getting her B.A. in Fine Arts and launching her career as a ceramicist.
For close to a quarter-century, Connie’s work — ceramics, paintings, photographs, and assemblages — appeared in numerous museum and gallery shows in Samoa and New England and ended up in widespread personal collections from Newport to the American Samoan Governor’s mansion.
In Samoa, Connie worked as Senior Archivist at the Polynesian Photo Archives. She assembled, edited, and published Ginger Storm, a collection of writings by women of Samoa, including her own poems and photographs. She was an officer of the local environmental NGO Le Vaomatua and a member of the American Samoa delegation to the Pacific Festival of The Arts in Koror, Palau. She married the local State Historic Preservation Officer.
In her Pacific sojourns, Connie also visited the islands of Oahu, Molokai, Tutuila, Upolu, Ofu, Olosega, Nauru, Rarotonga, Viti Levu, and Vanua Levu. She really fell for the coral reefs off Savu Savu; that was her kind of art. She looked good in a bikini.
In 2007, she returned to the mainland to continue her artistic endeavors in Jamestown, Rhode Island, where she belonged to the Newport Potters Guild, before returning to Owensboro three years ago to be close to her son and grandkids.
Connie is survived by her husband, the novelist and poet, John Enright; her son, Ashley and his wife Deanna; her sister, Vicki Scott; her stepson, Liam Enright; her grandchildren, Logan, Coburn, Jesse Marie, John Lucas, Taylor Cook; and great-grandchildren, Sophie, Ellie, and Love, all of whom will miss the generous energy of her restless spirit. As one of her Cape Cod fans recalled, “She sure could light up a room.” Or a life.
A remembrance party for Connie will be announced at a later date.