Pati Hill

Pati Hill (April 3, 1921 - September 19, 2014) was an American writer and photocopy artist known for her observational style of prose and her work with the IBM photocopier. While she was not the first artist to experiment with the copier, her work is distinguished by its focus on objects, her emphasis on the accessibility of the medium, and her efforts to unite image and text so that they may "fuse to become something other than either."

Personal life Hill was born Patricia Louise Guion Hill in Ashland, Kentucky in 1921.

For several years in the late 1980s, Hill owned an antiques shop in Mystic, Connecticut. In the 1940s, Hill married her second husband, Robert Meservey, a skier for the Dartmouth Ski Team, in what was called "a wedding-on-skis." Hill and Meservey skied to the church while Hill carried a bouquet of evergreen branches. Hill's marriage to Meservey was featured in a photo spread in LIFE.

Hill died in her home in Sens, France on September 19, 2014. In the late 1940s, Hill moved to Paris to continue her modeling career, becoming "a top-flight model" for Edward Molyneux and other designers. There, she modeled what she recalled was "the first collection of American clothes" in Paris.

The Nine Mile Circle received both positive and mixed reviews, celebrated for its "charming style" but criticized for its familiar content. One reviewer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch praised The Nine Mile Circle for its intimate look into the lives of its characters, saying, "You finish The Nine Mile Circle feeling almost guilty at having witnessed so much that is private and personal in the lives of these people" and further calling her style "fresh and intriguing" while offering a swift criticism of the novel's lack of form. Several reviewers favorably compared Hill to William Faulkner for her depth of insight into her characters. Harper's Bazaar published an excerpt of The Nine Mile Circle entitled "Jetty's Black Rage" in their April 1956 issue. Her final contribution was published in the Spring of 1981.

Copy art In 1962, Hill began collecting informational art and objects as a housekeeper, which would become the subjects of her earliest works on the photocopier. She cited two experiences as her inspiration for experimenting with the photocopier. Following this account, Hill realized "she could more easily part with some of the objects she'd been collecting if she photocopied them as mementos."

Hill possessed "a longtime curiosity about the details of objects.", Impossible Dreams earned Hill a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1976.

Hill did not view her prints as representations nor reproductions of physical objects, but she instead considered her prints as objects in and of themselves. In 1979, Hill published Letters to Jill: A catalogue and some notes on copying, which acts as a "jargon-free primer" on the photocopier as an artist's tool. She copied a bellpull, cobblestones, and a pear tree, roots and live worms included, all of which were pulled from Versailles. A Swan: An Opera in Nine Chapters, 1978. Photocopies of a dead swan paired with brief writings. 2017: Pati Hill: Photocopier, A Survey of Prints and Books (1974-83). Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, Connecticut.

Group 1976, 1977: Dialogue. UNESCO, Paris. 1979: Electroworks. George Eastman House, New York. 1980: L'Electrographie. Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. 1984: Electra. Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. 1984: New Media 2. Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden. 1985: Electroworks. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. 1994: La Disparition De L'Alphabet. Paul Bianchini Galeria Toner, Paris. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, New York Bayly Art Museum, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, France Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York City, New York Fiduciaire de France KPMG, Grenoble, France Musée de Sens, Sens-en-Bourgogne, France Xerox-USA, Stamford, Connecticut