In every scrap you’ll read about Susan Johnson and Theo Wujcik’s life in Ybor, you won’t find any discussion of why they divorced; all you will read is that, despite a divorce, the twosome remained close and that Susan cared for Theo until the day he died. To a letter, the articles focus on Theo’s art, his talent, his legacy; Susan is treated much as the paintings and brushes left behind: remnants of a great artist. Never once has his ex-wife and life partner explained the intricacies of their relationship. We sit in the Ybor loft she shares with Theo’s paintings, her cat, and their daughter’s dog, Dingo, and I ask her if it’s a secret, or too painful.
“Nobody asked.”
Nobody asked why she left Theo, the love of her life and the man who fathered the light of her life. Nobody asked how it felt to love an artist who, by his own admission, believed an artist couldn’t be a good family man. Nobody asked how she felt when she realized her daughter painted only to bond with Theo and, once grown, wanted no part of the art. Nobody asked what it was like for Susan, loving a vividly talented, complex, wonderful man. And nobody asked what it was like for her at the end, when, despite a divorce, she made sure Theo had everything she could give.
“What’s out there in the press is what other people had to say, and that’s OK, because everybody has their story, but they’re all mythologies,” Susan says of how the media glossed over the end of Theo’s life when she cared for him. “I don’t want to take anything away from anybody’s own stories, but there’s a real deeper story there, that I wasn’t trying to hide.”
Theo died in 2014, but Susan remains. She works at Home Shopping Network as an art director, she maintains Theo’s collection, and she’s balanced on a precipice now: Does she give her life over to preserving every last drop of Theo? Or, if she doesn’t, is that OK?
But back up, because you need to know their story, lest you see only a woman cataloging remnants of this giant of Ybor, this man who made Ybor fun, this USF professor who lived in Ybor when it pulsed with art and brought his disciples to be a part of the storied city’s energy. Theo plucked DJ cards off the street and pieced them into art; art collectors across the country covet his works. To the cruise ship traveler taking a shore excursion to Ybor, the loft where Theo painted might offer a spot of charm, but in the art world — and in the Ybor world — Theo Wujcik epitomizes the not-so-long-ago halcyon days of Ybor as a haven for artists and writers.
Susan and Theo fell in love in Ybor, when he came into The Ovo Cafe, where she worked. Theo told her later he was smitten immediately with her, but at the time, all Susan knew was that she’d dance like crazy to get his attention at Tracks (the storied and long-gone nightclub) and nothing happened until one night, fortified with liquid courage, he asked her to dance. They wed three weeks later.
That launched what one friend called a “beautiful, messy love story, filled with flaws and hopes.” Theo always supported and loved her; he helped her launch her own gallery and went so far as to work as a bar back when she worked at The Castle. But Theo lived his life subject to creative bursts. The same brilliance that drew Susan to him also left her alone.
For inspiration, Theo would head to the greyhound track.
“That was an issue for me, not because he was a big gambler and spent a lot of money, but it was time away from us,” she says. But she understood why he went.
“It exercised his brain in other ways than reading, writing, or creating did,” she says. “It fueled his process similar to dancing and hanging out at the punk clubs. It was not about the money — and he never spent very much — typically $20, tops. But it left me terribly lonely.”
She nursed their daughter, Frankie, for the first year and slept about as much as any new mom does. Theo would go to the track, sometimes twice a day, and teach and paint. There wasn’t a whole lot left over for Susan. She wanted to be happy, and she thought perhaps things would be better if they had more space. She rented a house on the Hillsborough River.
“It started as a dream, with two acres stretching out,” she says. But the basement, which Theo intended to use as a studio, had mold in it, so he had to rent a studio. Soon, they only saw each other when he came home from painting and teaching. He’d eat dinner and then leave for the track.
“I was getting depressed and it was making him more and more insecure,” Susan says. They separated for a year and a half in 1998, but still spent time together; he still loved her, and he still wanted to be a father and husband.
“All of a sudden, I really missed him a lot,” she says. They decided to get back together, and stayed a couple until 2002. They legally parted in 2003, but they never really parted. Just as he had woven himself into Ybor’s history and culture, his life was inextricably linked to Susan’s, and hers to his.
“We had a very romantic relationship, on and off,” she says, suggesting they stayed intimate as well. When Theo painted his Nest series, he created a larger-than-life nest for the loft where Susan now lives. It was, she hints, quite, um, cozy for the two of them.
“How do you say that?” she laughs. “‘Oh, yeah, we were getting it on in the nest?’”
Theo had survived prostate and heart issues when doctors told him in October, 2013, that he had stage four cancer. Theo and Susan weren’t told at first what type it was; given Theo’s prognosis, it didn’t seem to matter. (Later they were told it was lung cancer.) He and Susan reunited one final time.
“Our love got really intense. …We just loved each other and nothing mattered anymore. We were having so much fun together. Yes, we did argue, we had fights even when he was ill, but that’s the way we were,” she says.
Theo died in 2014. In his last days, he finally asked Susan, “Why did you leave me?”
“Because I was mad,” she told him. “But I never stopped loving you.”
She had questions, too.
“Why didn’t you paint me? Why didn’t you have me pose nude?” she asked him. She always wanted him to paint her, “not for the public, I didn’t care about that; it would have been a way for us to connect in an intimate way.”
His response?
“Don’t you know you’re in all my work?”
She’s glad she asked.
Theo's Legacy: Johnson sorts through the Wujcik archives .
Chip Weiner
Theo’s legacyThe days when people like Theo Wujcik called Ybor City home may be gone, but Susan — and other community leaders — want to preserve a slice of the past. Susan would like to see Theo’s life and work in Ybor preserved, and his loft — owned by College Hunks Hauling Junk — perhaps transformed into a museum of Ybor’s artistic heritage. She’s not sure what will happen next, but she does know it’s too much for her to do alone. To get involved, visit theowujcik.com or facebook.com/theowujcik.
This article appears in Apr 7-13, 2016.