Bottoms, Tom and Rita

Administrative History

Rita Bottoms, the Head of Special Collections at UC Santa Cruz from 1966-2003, played a central role in establishing and promoting Kenneth Patchen Archive. The main collection includes over 150 Patchen's "painted poems", colorful paintings that incorporate free-verse poetry and surrealistic and whimsical creatures and images to manuscripts of poetry and prose, as well as Patchen's letters, other painted books editions, papier-mache creatures, and recordings of some of his poetry readings.

During a period of four years, 1997-2001, Mrs. Bottoms and her husband donated their collection of Kenneth Patchen painted books and silkscreen portfolios. The volumes were donated to be used as exhibition copies with intention of enhancing the existing Kenneth Patchen collection, and to help to promote the other Patchen collections and Patchen's works outside the repository.

The silkscreen print portfolios were loaned on two occasions to institutions overseas: In June 1998, they were the focus of events at two major London venues, a reading at the Tate Gallery and an exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall's Poetry Library. In June 1999 Rita Bottoms, accompanied by Miriam Patchen, delivered two portfolios containing over 30 serigraphed pages and participated in a public program and exhibition focusing on the UCSC's Kenneth Patchen Archive at Centro Studi Americani in Rome, Italy.

Along with silkscreen prints there are three Kenneth Patchen's painted book editions, which were purchased from the collection of Hortense Baer, a patron of the author.