Artist Patti Cramer’s life was “never humdrum, but exciting and ethereal,” said her brother, Dennis Cramer of Paso Robles, Calif.
She was also an “eclectic dresser with a wicked cool apartment, filled with antiques she’d picked up,” he said.
Cramer, who died Sept. 27 in Tallahassee, Fla., at age 65, was for years a well-known Denver artist, whose paintings were noticed often because of her urban scenes — she caught people doing everyday things.
A reception to honor her and her work is planned for 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at Dazzle, 930 Lincoln St. Her works will be on display there through Oct. 24.
Cramer’s works were in many Denver galleries, and she sent many to her brother.
“We don’t have a room without something of hers,” Dennis Cramer said.
Patti Cramer was born in Davenport, Iowa, on Feb. 17, 1945, graduated from high school there and earned her college degree at the University of Arizona.
She began drawing “as soon as she got her first crayon,” said Dennis Cramer, adding, “and it wasn’t always on paper. Sometimes it was on our walls.”
When Cramer first came to Denver, she worked with kids who had severe learning disabilities, said her lifelong friend Nonnie Fleming of Tallahassee. She taught art at the Children’s Museum.
Cramer wandered the streets and went to parks, jazz clubs, and art supply and book stores to indulge in her favorite hobby, people-watching, wrote Patricia Calhoun, Westword editor, in a column about Cramer. Cramer had worked for Westword, and for years her drawings appeared in the Denver weekly.
“Her speciality was people as eclectic and amusing and slightly askew as the artist herself,” Calhoun wrote.
Cramer’s paintings are in many private collections.
“She was easy-going, kind and sort of reserved, and had a huge network of friends,” Fleming said.
But Cramer, who was just over 5 feet tall and weighed maybe 100 pounds, wasn’t one to “put up with things” when they weren’t going right, said her brother.
“She wasn’t timid,” he said.
For many years, Cramer made a good living at art, but there were other times “when she’d do what she called a couch painting (something to put behind a couch) in exchange for her pharmacy bill,” said her brother.
When she first came to Denver, Cramer lived in a loft in what is now the Coors Field area, long before people were living in lofts, Calhoun said.
Cramer had a wide range of friends, from artists to musicians to “people from Iowa,” Calhoun said.
People liked her, “and who wouldn’t like to know a talented, eccentric person like her?” Calhoun asked.
Cramer moved to Tallahassee a few months ago, and friends and family members said they didn’t know she was ill with lung cancer.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
