Santa Fe architect couple die in Illinois plane crash

Claudia L. Silva, The Santa Fe New Mexican
·2 min read

Aug. 17—James Evanson was an artist, architect, furniture designer and pilot — and that was just the beginning.

The ending came suddenly and tragically Saturday when Evanson and his wife, Lisa Evanson, were killed when their single-engine plane crashed while attempting to make an emergency landing on a road in central Illinois.

The Santa Fe couple were en route to New York on Saturday when James Evanson reported his plane was having engine issues and attempted an emergency landing on Illinois Route 116, the Peoria Journal Star reported. According to a news release from the Peoria County Coroner's Office, the "plane heroically navigated between vehicles on a roadway before striking a building" in Hanna City, Ill.

James Evanson was 75 and Lisa Evanson was 67.

According to his website, James Evanson was an artist and in the functional art movement, creating works with a utilitarian purposes. One of his most recent pieces, Buffalo, was featured at the 41st annual Western Spirit Juried Art Show in Cheyenne Wyo., in March. His intricate glass sculptures were eye-catching and he also worked with other materials, designing everything from chairs to lighting.

Over the decades, his work was displayed in galleries around the world, including the Great Design/World Exhibition in Nagoya, Japan, and the Oslo Museum of Applied Art in Oslo, Norway.

Evanson was born in Sidney, Mont., in 1946. According to biographical material on his website, his knack for design dates to an early age when his father taught him cabinetmaking and carpentry.

Evanson served in the U.S. Army as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War in 1969 and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Bronze Star. He went on to study at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles and at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he received a degree in architecture and met his future wife.

Lisa Evanson was born in New Jersey in 1955 and grew up watching her parents and grandparents run a furniture business in New York. She received a master's degree in architectural design from Yale University and became a registered architect.

The couple married in 1984 and went on to open a design and art studio together in New York. After building their Santa Fe home 14 years ago, it was featured in the Western Art & Architecture magazine in 2018.

The home had a view of the Sangre de Cristos on one side and Los Alamos on the other.