Constance Kay

Constance "Connie" Victoria Kay died peacefully at her home in Swan Lake on April 1, 2007, with her family by her side after a year and a half battle with lung cancer.

She was born on June 29, 1947, to Decla Smith Kay and Ron Benn Kay in Denver, Colo.

Connie lived a full and varied life. She grew up with horses and was a champion barrel racer. She graduated from Golden High School in 1965.

After high school, she lived in Aspen and San Francisco. She lived and traveled in Europe for a year, where she married Campbell Dalglish. Their daughter, Sierra Camille Kay, was born in Boulder, Colo., in 1971.

Connie moved to the Oregon coast after she was divorced. There she worked as a florist and pursued her career as an artist. She made many beautiful watercolors and did one of her most beautiful custom tile jobs of images of the native flora and fauna for a restaurant.

In the early 1980s, she moved to Whitefish, where she made some of the most lasting and important friendships of her life. She adored hiking the mountains of Glacier National Park.

Connie moved to Santa Fe, N.M., where she had a successful tile business and gallery with her sister, Ronda Kay. Connie s creative custom tile work and murals have been installed in homes, businesses and gardens all over the world, from a public garden in Milan, Italy, to a McDonald's restaurant in Singapore.

Her work ranged from beautiful landscapes, to life-sized day-of-the-dead skeletons and has been published in most all of the major interior design magazines, including Architectural Digest and House Beautiful.

Connie always dreamed of having property in Montana. She purchased her home in Swan Lake in 1999, but because of her tile business and her mother's failing health, she didn't move back to Montana until 2005.

She was at home in nature. It was not that long ago that she was known to take a 16-mile hike by herself in the mountains of Montana or Colorado.

Connie was an incredible artist and a beautiful and unique person who left an unforgettable impression on everyone she met. She was very spiritual, but she also had a wicked sense of humor, so it was very appropriate that she died on Palm Sunday and April Fools Day.

She is survived by her daughter Sierra Kay; sister Ronda Kay and her grandson Bixby Boss, whom she loved dearly. In the last months of her life she enjoyed playing and cooking with him and seeing him perform at the Bigfork Summer Playhouse.

A celebration of Connie's life will take place on April 14 at 11:30 a.m. at her beautiful home and property, with a hike to Bond Falls at 1 p.m. Stop at the Swan Lake Trading Post for directions to Connie's house.

Instead of flowers, Connie would have liked to have donations sent to Friends of the Wild Swan, P.O. Box 5103, Swan Lake MT 59911.