Abby Clow
November 2, 1943 – July 22, 2022
Abby Clow (née Abby Lynn Dickow) was born in Chicago in 1943 and moved to Los Angeles as a young girl. She was raised in Santa Monica, and would later in life boast that most of her teenage extracurricular activities were spent on the local beach or sailing the Pacific on a catamaran with friends. A precocious child, she graduated from high school two years early and started UCLA at just sixteen.
After college, eager to see the world, she jumped on a cargo ship to Europe, where she traveled the region on her own. She worked in graphic design in Beverly Hills and moved north to San Francisco in 1966. In the 1970s and 80s, Abby raised her son, David, in Marin County. Always artistically inclined, she painted and taught art and poetry at Ross School and helped manage an art gallery in San Francisco.
In the mid 1990s, life events brought her to Sonoma. There she found llamas and enthusiastically threw herself into raising several of the gentle animals on her property. She traveled extensively. After several trips to Latin America, she became passionate about the culture and art from that region. Later she traveled to Africa, which she would say affected her deeply. A visitor to her home would experience a well-curated mix of influences from both continents.
Abby was always a reader of an impressively broad range. Fiction was her love, but she also consumed philosophy, poetry and history. She could speak easily about Nietzsche or Goethe, and one could find quotes from Rumi posted on her refrigerator. At one point, she hand typed a quote from Goethe (focusing on just the right font for effect) that she thought would give her son helpful guidance, which ended with:
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
Abby passed on July 22 at her house in Sonoma. Over her life, she collected an extraordinary group of friends. Her irreverent take on life, her crackling, sardonic wit, her empathy and love attracted many into her sphere. She was an immensely special woman and will be deeply missed by her family and the many others who loved her. Abby is survived by her son, David, her two granddaughters, Sophie and Emma Biegel, her four step children, Eric, Greg, Guy and Louise Clow, and her nine step grandchildren.
Published by San Francisco Chronicle on Aug. 28, 2022.
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