SOUTHBURY, CONN. — It is with deep sadness that we report the death of our colleague Carol Sims, who died January 26 after a brief illness. Carol joined the editorial staff of Antiques and The Arts Weekly in 1999. Vitality, imagination, an acute visual sense and boundless enthusiasm distinguished her work here. She radiated the belief that all was possible, a quality that inspired her many friends and colleagues. Thoroughly original, she will be much missed.

Born in Los Angeles on June 18, 1957, to Barbara Ellen Tanner and Robert Alan Bailey, Carol moved with her family first to St Louis, then Vail, Colo. She studied at Battle Mountain High School near Vail, enjoying the intimacy and freedom of her class of only ten students. She subsequently earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the University of Colorado, which she attended on full scholarship.

A tall, striking blonde, Carol, in the first of many and varied professional endeavors, worked full-time as a ski instructor at the Vail Ski School, where she was RMSIA-certified. In off months, she was a greens keeper at the nearby Beaver Creek Golf Course. In 1982, she married fellow ski instructor William J. Sims Jr, who subsequently established a graphic design practice. The couple moved East to further their careers, living first in New York City before relocating to Connecticut. They eventually settled in Southbury.

Carol joined Antiques and The Art Weekly after a stint at the Silvermine Guild Arts Center in New Canaan, Conn., where between 1993 and 1996 she acted as liaison between staff and the guild’s 300 artist members. During her time at Silvermine, Carol organized exhibitions, raised money and promoted the group’s activities. Between 1984 and 1990, she worked for the innovative new publication Cook’s Magazine. There she honed her remarkable skill as an advertising sales representative, one with special expertise in luxury-goods promotion.

Carol drew upon all these abilities at Antiques and The Arts Weekly. A lively writer, she contributed informed reports on the arts and antiques market. She conceived, developed and sustained Antiques and The Arts Weekly’s semiannual Gallery Guide. She took an avid interest in the creation of the newspaper’s website and was eager to improve it with the latest technology. Working with her on our annual Old West guide to shows and sales was a special pleasure. It provided a glimpse of Carol, bedecked in the Native American jewelry she inherited from her mother, as the frontier woman this New England resident had once been.

Carol never stopped creating. In what little free time she had, she completed three books in her Candlewax trilogy and published another book, Invasion of The Shrews, under the pen name Yuri Whiskerin. She also painted, exhibiting her work in several galleries before gradually devoting more time to writing.

Carol was enormously proud of her husband and her two sons. William J. Sims III, called Billy, also an artist, earned degrees from the Massachusetts College of Art and the Chicago Arts Institute. Younger son Henry Alister Sims graduated cum laude from Wheaton College in Norton, Mass.

In addition to her husband and sons, Carol is survived by two brothers, Dan of St Louis and Brian of Leadville, Colo., and mother-in-law Blanche L. Sims of Southbury. She was predeceased by her mother, father, stepfather Nathaniel McKelvey and sister Kate Bailey of Tucson, Ariz.

Arrangements were private.

-Laura Beach