ARTIST SUSAN BAKER CREATES DESIGN FOR THE 20th ANNUAL PROVINCETOWN HARBOR SWIM FOR LIFE & PADDLER FLOTILLA, A COMMUNITY BENEFIT FOR AIDS, WOMEN'S HEALTH AND YOUTH, SET FOR SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2007.

Celebrated and prolific artist Susan Baker of North Truro − founder and proprietor of her own museum, The Susan Baker Memorial Museum − has created the design for the 20th Provincetown Swim for Life & Paddler Flotilla, scheduled for Saturday, September 8.

Baker's legendary, humorous art, which has taken the form of sculpture, drawings, t-shirts and books, is evident in this year's design: a flotilla of birds, cows, cats and other assorted animals swimming across Provincetown Harbor past Long Point. This references the first swimmers in 1988 who swam from the Boatslip rather than Long Point, and also, Bakers legendary t-shirt from the 1980s which mocked the evacuation plan of the nuke plant in Plymouth: Swim East. The colorful image of bright pink, yellow, blue and green is printed, for the first time, on 100% organic cotton t-shirts. They are available at the AIDS Support Group at the Firehouse and at Venture Athletics.

More recently Baker's has been painting images from her extensive travels to Europe, especially Italy. As her husband, poet Keith Althaus, observes, "each painting is part challenge and discovery, and part tribute and memory."  She is inspired by this quote from Marcel Proust: "The real discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." She attended the Rhode Island School of Design and was a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown from 1969-1970.