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River Rage      Collage of Paste Paper with Calligraphy of Artist's Poetry 23" x 22"

Pattie Palmer-Baker loves words--every part of them -- the sounds. the ideas they convey and even the shapes of the letters. In her body of work she captures an event, an experience or a sound into a visual form that combines her poetry with collage. The poetry is calligraphed is a way that completes the visual experience.  It meanders carefully along the edges of the collaged materials making a visual statement as well as conveying thoughts. The integration of all these elements- poetry, calligraphy and collage- creates images that are greater than the sum of their parts.  

Baker's calligraphic style is based on the Carolingian alphabet, a beautiful alphabet that thrived during the time of Charlemagne's reign (768-814). It is a miniscule (lower case) script which was developed as the writing standard to enable the small literate European upper class to more easily recognize the Roman alphabet.   It is the basis for our modern letter forms.  Baker's handling of the ascenders and descenders, those lines which are the tails of the letters p, d, f, and b, for example, give a rhythm and grace to the entire collage.

All the elements of an artwork are controlled by Palmer-Baker.  As noted above, she calligraphs her own poetry. She also creates the paste papers from which she cuts the collage elements. Again, she gets her inspiration from history. Paste paper is a 17th century decorated paper technique which allows the artist to create highly textured surfaces with vibrant color shifts.  The artist paints a mixture of color and artist-made paste on wet paper.  Before the surface dries, the artist must move quickly using texture-making tools to create an interesting surfaces.  Once dried, the paper is cut into shapes or images which will give meaning to the poetry and the final artwork.  Gold leaf or metallic pigment may also be applied to add even more richness to the surface.