Nicki (Sue) Fox Adler

life story

Nicki Adler, née Nicki Sue Fox, was born July 6,1946 in Queens, New York.

She grew up with her parents, Eleanor and George Fox, in a close-knit community that shaped her childhood. By the time she went away to college, she'd made it through the advanced classes at Jamaica High School, learned to play cello with the school orchestra (even performing once at Carnegie Hall), and been voted “School Artist” in a cutthroat election. When she wasn’t studying, drawing, and spending time with family, she enjoyed lively adventures in back alleys and city streets with other children from her neighborhood.

Nicki’s urban upbringing was balanced by joy-filled summers at Camp Robinson Crusoe in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, where she fell in love with the goats and made fast friends with human campers, as well.

She spoke of her time there as "her best days" and, along with weekend excursions with her beloved dad, these experiences endowed her with a lifelong love of nature.

Extraordinary travels with her parents set her up with vivid stories for life. On one particularly formative trip, the Fox family embarked on a work-related mission: joining George's beloved cousin, Gustav Erlich, on a search through the French countryside to find the famously reclusive artist, Raoul Dufy.

When they eventually found him, six year-old Nicki presented Dufy with a set of drawings of haystacks she had seen on their journey. In return, he insisted on repaying the gift with his own drawing: a portrait of her that she treasured for the rest of her life.

Nicki was one of a small group of women to enroll in Carnegie Institute of Technology’s College of Fine Arts in 1964. There she developed her studio arts skills, met her first husband, David Adler, and joined a movement inspired by Swiss modern graphic design.

In a stint as a photojournalist, Nicki bore witness to the political activism of the late 1960s. Nicki later founded her own design firm, working for The Carnegie Museum of Art, corporate clients, and the National Endowment for the Arts’ Poetry on the Buses. Often the only woman in the room, she blazed trails and paved the way for others throughout her entire career.

After several more years in Pittsburgh (where daughter Zoe was born in 1972) the family moved to Washington DC, where she worked at the Government Printing Office.

A few years later, Nicki moved with her second husband, Jim Eschinger, to Connecticut to pursue a career in corporate advertising and design. During their 25 years there, Nicki held several jobs, founding her own design business and commuting to a large advertising firm in Manhattan.

While Nicki was passionate about her career, she also found joy outside the office with family and at home. She and Jim frequently spent their free time on over-the-top Martha Stewart-inspired house and garden projects -- always with their shared designers’ flair for color, composition, and scale. During more than a few winters, their dining room was completely taken over by grow lights and seed starts. These two were not known for doing things halfway.

In 2006, Nicki and Jim moved to Tucson, Arizona.

There they enjoyed a newfound sense of community, exploring the desert landscape, and falling in love with mountains, cactus gardens, raspados, their historic neighborhood, and local culture.

Nicki’s work in the built environment lives on at The Mercado San Augustin, where she designed the branding and hand-painted signage.

Over time, her artistic focus shifted to silversmithing, and she and Jim built a professional studio in their home. She went on to sell her jewelry at Tucson’s Museum of Contemporary Art and during Open Studio events; her pieces grace the wrists, necks, and earlobes of women across the country.

She loved hearing stories these women reported of feeling an increased sense of their own power while wearing her work.

Nicki had the forceful drive of a true artist and lifelong student: she needed to keep learning and making, and she approached everything she loved with characteristic enthusiasm, love of challenge, and drive toward perfection.

After throwing herself intensively into knitting, esoteric cooking, house projects, gardening, ceramics, and silversmithing, she returned to sewing clothes, a craft her two beloved tailor grandfathers taught her as a child.

She read books and took classes on topics and techniques that interested her right up until the end, when her cancer made it impossible.

In 2021, after receiving a diagnosis of stage IV breast cancer, Nicki moved to Minneapolis to be near Zoe and her family. She arrived in time to celebrate Mother’s day, and the city burst into bloom to welcome her. A month later she took Zoe and her family on a trip to Hawaii, a place she and her father held dear.

Over the last year of her life, Nicki cherished being nearby for her grandsons' school plays and sports games, family dinners, and time with her dear friend Sheila. She only complained a *little* about the weather, after fall turned to winter. The last year of her life was spent among loved ones.

The strength, grit, and courage Nicki showed in the face of difficult cancer treatments and the certain proximity of death were consistent with the courage she summoned in other chapters of her life. By the time she died, she was ready: telling everyone that she was grateful to have lived a long, wonderful life, and that she had no unfinished business.

Preceded in death by her parents George and Eleanor Fox, and her husband, Jim Eschinger, Nicki is survived by daughter Zoe Adler, (Bill Dossett) of Minneapolis, MN, Stepdaughter Sarah Eschinger Milholland (John Milholland) of Huntersville, NC, Stepson Chad Eschinger (Deb Villavicencio) of Guilford, CT, and grandchildren: Max and Eli Adler Resnik, Mia and Mac Eschinger, and Christopher, Reilly, and Ian Milholland.

“Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention...the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”

― Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

Online gathering to remember Nicki

Saturday, May 7

9am AZ time / 11am central / noon Eastern

If you can attend, please use this form to send your email address:

https://forms.gle/edFpfP61jwnsuqgU9