Discipline: Literature

Pati Hill

Discipline: Literature
Region: Stonington, CT
MacDowell Fellowships: 1958, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1969, 1977
Pati Hill (1921-2014) was an American writer and photocopy artist best 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." While living in a small house in France, Hill wrote a memoir, The Pit and the Century Plant, and her first novel, The Nine Mile Circle. The Pit and the Century Plant, an account of her experience in the French countryside, was praised for its evocative reflections and "vivid appreciation" of life among the French. In this memoir, Hill recounts her experiences with "the hardships of country living," forming a relationship with her neighbor across the road, and her dealings with nature.

Studios

New Jersey

Pati Hill worked in the New Jersey studio.

The yellow clapboard New Jersey Studio, located on a grassy, sloping site, was funded by the New Jersey Federation of Women’s Clubs and built as an exact replica of Monday Music Studio (1913). The studio’s porch rests on fieldstone piers that increase in height as the ground slopes to the west. Like Monday Music Studio, New Jersey…

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