Patricia Louisiana Knop was a true original in every way. Her style, her looks, her talents, her social interactions, all of it was unlike anyone else.
I first met her and her late husband, Zalman King, and their two daughters, when I moved from Manhattan to Santa Monica in the early 1980s to try and make a living in movies and TV. Zalman was a Jersey boy who knew my poetry about growing up there so we became instant friends.
The first time I went to their house and met Pat, I knew I was in the presence of a magical human. Their home was a big wooden structure, as I remember it, more like houses in the Midwest or back East than the one-story stucco Southern California Mexican influenced houses that were more common. Entering it felt like entering a museum. It was full of Pat's often massive sculptures as well as found objects like an angel from the prow of a ship or the carved wooden animals from an antique carousel.
Pat not only painted and sculpted and made smaller art objects, like individually unique pieces of jewelry, she also helped produce and write her director/writer husband's movies and TV shows, and a lot more. But as I commented when I found out that she had passed, for me her main achievement was making me, and I'm sure many others, feel blessed every time I was in her presence, as well as totally accepted, with all my flaws. I adored her, as I think almost everyone who knew her did.
My deepest condolences to her daughters Chloe and Gillian, and other family and friends.
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