In the last six months of his life, though, Joyce - weakened by the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that killed him - turned to smaller, more contained work, which he could easily do alone at his desk. Where he once photographed people, he moved on to something between landscape and still life, focusing his digital camera on tiny details and textures of things from a street corner to a section of the back of his house. Where he once preferred black and white, he started working in color.

And, with admirable success, he began creating new ways of displaying his two-dimensional photographs in three dimensions.

You can see Joyce's last finished piece in the "Art in the Family" show at the Jacobs Gallery through July 17. Framed and titled by his widow, Kacey Joyce, "The Corner" is an 8-by-10-inch color photograph of a street corner, the camera aimed down at the sidewalk, curb and gutter. The picture would be a quite ordinary study in shape and texture except that Joyce - interested throughout his career in problems of visual perception - mounted the image on two separate planes, so that the sidewalk is raised just about a quarter inch above the street.

The effect is wonderful, a bit of visual magic that is completely captivating. By raising the sidewalk just that little bit, the image sparkles into life. You want to touch the sidewalk to feel the concrete texture, even though you know it's not really there.

The photograph was not originally included in the show. On opening night, Kacey Joyce literally pulled another work of her husband's off the gallery wall and hung the new photo in its place.

When gallery director Tina Rinaldi found out it was Joyce's last photo, she let it stay. "I would have done that myself," she said.

"The Corner" is one of four experimental images her husband created before he died, said Kacey Joyce, who is trying to complete her husband's artistic legacy. "David was working in the hospital right up to the day he died," she said. "He was even photographing in the hospital. He and I would walk around the halls and look for anything that resembled a face. Spots on the floor. Rivets in a door. He was photographing them."

The other works are still in rough study form, unframed images clipped to black mat board Joyce used as he sought the most compelling presentation for the new work.

Kacey Joyce is also working to complete big art by her husband. Along with her son-in-law, Victor Maldonado, and friends Robert Consentino and Mark Dixon, she is working on a large public art project he had been commissioned for in Scottsdale, Ariz. The commission was to do three large photomosaics made up of portraits of local people for a new senior center. "David hadn't started it yet," she said. "But he had proposed several ideas." Maldonado is planning to go to Scottsdale in July or August to begin making portraits for the mosaic.

An artist herself - she is well known as a printmaker - Kacey Joyce is confident she and the others can complete the project as David Joyce had envisioned it. After all, she says, she worked alongside him for more than three decades and knows his artistic vision as intimately as anyone could. Completing her husband's work has also helped her come to terms with her grief, Joyce said. "It's kept me extremely busy," she said. "And focused on something other than myself."

June 13, 2004