Willis 'Frank' Bramblett, artist and teacher, dies at 67

Willis "Frank" Bramblett Jr., 67, an artist and former professor at Temple's Tyler School of Art, died at his home in Plymouth Meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 29. He had lived with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis for several years.

Born in Cumming, Ga., his father's hometown, Mr. Bramblett grew up in his mother's hometown of Wedowee, Ala. In his senior year at the University of Georgia, he married fellow student Karen Reid, then attended Yale University, completing his M.F.A. degree in 1972. The couple moved to Lansdale that fall, and Mr. Bramblett began a teaching career at Tyler that would span 38 years. In 1975, they moved to a loft at Third and Vine Streets, joining other early artist-pioneers of the Old City neighborhood.

Mr. Bramblett was the professor everyone loved. Modest to the core and always ready for an interesting - and typically, in his Southern way, rambling - conversation, he offered a sympathetic ear, sage advice, and remained supportive of his ex-students, many of whom didn't know he had shown his work in exhibitions at Mary Boone Gallery and other high-profile New York galleries in the early 1970s.

"Frank was the most generous teacher - he always had time to talk, but also to listen," said Austin Lee, a recent student of Mr. Bramblett's who helped organize "Thanks Frank," an exhibition of former students' works marking his 2010 retirement. "He liked to open things up, to encourage new ways of looking at the world, and he gave us the tools to think on our own."

As an artist, Mr. Bramblett received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010, he was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. In Philadelphia, his work was exhibited at Moore College of Art & Design, the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at the University of the Arts, and Tiger Strikes Asteroid.

Last spring, he was the subject of a career retrospective, "Frank Bramblett: No Intention," at the Woodmere Art Museum, which had shown the remarkable "Accomplished" series of the artist's own obsessively crossed-out "to-do" lists attached directly to the wall in grid formations as part of its 72nd Annual Juried Exhibition in 2013.

"Frank's generosity of spirit led him to make works that embraced people with visual beauty," said William Valerio, Woodmere's director. ". . . As people gave themselves over to that beauty, Frank made them question ideas that weren't on the table to be questioned."

"There was no separation between life and work for him," recalled Odili Donald Odita, painter and Tyler colleague who gave a talk on Mr. Bramblett's inspiration as an artist-philosopher during the Woodmere show. "He lived everything as if it were one."

In addition to his wife of 46 years, he is survived by a son, Reid; daughter-in-law; and two grandsons.

A memorial reception will take place at Woodmere on Sunday, Oct. 11, from 7 to 9 p.m. Memorial donations may be made to the Miquon School (www.miquon.org) or KeystoneCare Hospice (www.keystonecare.com).