Freddie Baer passed Wednesday night, November 12, after a lengthy struggle with that aggressive asshole, cancer.
Freddie contained multitudes. Like the collage artist she was, she pulled these sometimes disparate pieces together into Freddie – someone who was so uniquely herself, so one-of-a-kind, that it is almost hard to describe her.
You may have known her from her foodie passions – when she found a restaurant that was great, she frequented it, in every sense of the word, making friends of the staff, introducing other friends to the restaurant, relishing those meals.
Maybe you knew Freddie from her arts – her collage work, her beading work, her graphic design, her calendar collage parties, her many many screen prints or political posters or works for fan communities or AK Press. Come to think of it, those are also arts of assemblage – where someone like Freddie, who has a good eye for individual pieces, and even more important, a good eye for the potential they have to work together.
Those assembling arts brought us to another Freddie passion – thrifting. Freddie loved a bargain, but more than that, she loved finding treasures – whether they were designer label clothes, or gorgeous glass balls, or hidden gems of paintings by local artists.
Maybe her eye for the exquisite was also responsible for her eclectic and enormous circle of friends. From artists to science fiction fandom to anarchists, Freddie was always making friends. Probably most of us engaged with her first because of her passions, her quirks, her humor – her enormous personality. But at the core, Freddie’s friends loved her because of her kindness. Freddie’s kindness and generosity were so deep and intrinsic to her nature, that paradoxically you could almost miss them, just by focusing on the personality, or her sometimes gruff mask. But she would always share what she had, open her home to you, put her works in the world heedless of credit.
However you knew Freddie, you probably knew her strong opinions and wicked sense of humor, as well as her quirkiness and kindness.
Fredrika Baer, born September 10, 1952 in Chicago, Illinois, died November 12, 2025, in Eureka, California.
[written by Freddie’s friend, Laura Quilter] [posted on facebook]
More information will be announced soon.
Please start looking for photos & video to post to Freddie’s webpage that is being created. freddiebaer.com

Comments
More information on Freddie…
anonymous (not verified) Sat, 11/22/2025 - 13:05
More information on Freddie's life from facebook:
Collage artist and graphic designer, associated with anarchist, feminist, and science fiction fandom communities. Her works were widely published as covers of many magazines and books, and disseminated as stand-alone political pieces.
Fredrika Elizabeth Baer was born and raised in Chicago. During high school and college, she had already become political, leading a petition against "artificial settings" and surveillance in high school.
In college, she was exposed to anarchism by Neil Rest, and joined the "Nameless Anarchist Horde". Over the next few years, Baer worked with a number of radical media and activist organizations, including the IWW, Solidarity Bookstore, Newspace, and Black and Red.
Baer achieved national notoriety in 1972 for an action targeting the author of a pro-rape article in the campus newspaper. Baer and two colleagues invited him to join them, then held him down and talked to him about the realities of rape. Baer was arrested and charged with rape, but was released due in part to the belief at that time that women could not rape men. The incident was immortalized by singer-songwriter Leslie Fish, "The Bold Rapista".
Baer began collage and illustration work in 1981, after attending an art show reception for Incite!, a San Francisco-based radical collage group. Her first collage was "Bosses: The Real Time Bandits" (1981).
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Baer was involved in the local anarchist and punk scene, designing many posters, album covers, and illustrations for books, articles, and works of fiction. She worked with Processed World, which she later described as a "fiasco", Fifth Estate, Anarchy, AK Press, Times Change Press, and Komotion International. She illustrated many works by Peter Lamborn Wilson, aka Hakim Bey, and was particularly associated with the Situationists and surrealist movements. Baer's numerous collaborations with Wilson (Hakim Bey) were also reflected in his preface to her 1992 collection, Ecstatic Incisions.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Baer's work with the science fiction community greatly increased. In addition to illustrations in numerous science fiction & fantasy publications, Baer began designing posters for SF cons and awards, including JaneCon, PotLatch, WisCon, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award (later re-named the "Otherwise Award").
In 2020, Baer relocated to Eureka, California. She was diagnosed with cancer and died in Eureka, on November 12, 2025.
Baer was known for intricate and detailed collages with a great deal of detailed cutting. While she incorporated digital work into her collage, she primarily worked with exacto blades, glue, and original printed work. She was particularly known for collaging together vintage illustrations of nature, women, and patterns, with modern imagery of technology. Her style was described as "juxtapos[ing] graceful archetypal medieval figures and nudes beside the charged symbols of modern technological and industrial life" "The dexterity with which she performs her craft complements the painstaking work of the original engraves. Not a paste-up blunder in sight." "She has taken very traditional, conservative images and created from them witty, anarchic, shocking and beautiful viewing."
"Looking through Ecstatic Incisions, there appear to be four basic styles of collage which Baer uses: images contrived solely of nineteenth century engravings; ones with a patchwork of geometric construction; ones using photographs and ones where text is integrated into the design. ... [In contrast with Max Ernst ], Baer's work is clearly created from different pieces -- she plays with scale; she often has large figures in the foreground which break out of the picture frame, and her placement of objects is much more straight forward. Ernst's collages reflect his background as a painter, whilst Baer's compositions are of a more graphic bent."
Baer's subject matter was described as "ranging from the bitingly political to the sublimely surreal"
She is mentioned by critics as an important collagist of the marginals milieu of punk, political, and literary zines along with contemporaries such as James Koehnline, Ed Lawrence, Joe Schwind, and Mykell Zhan.
R. Seth Friedman of Factsheet Five names her as an influence on his art.
Published works
Ecstatic Incisions: The Collage Art of Freddie Baer (AK Press, 1992) (collects 40+ previously published collages)
Covers and other notable collages
1988, cover, Factsheet Five #25 (February 1988)
1989, cover, Anarchy #20/21 (Aug.-Oct. 1989)
1990, "Read Our Lips! We Demand Choice" (in the collections of the Oakland Museum of California; widely reprinted)
??, "Don't Fuck with Mother Nature" (widely reprinted)
1991, cover, Anarchy #29 (Summer 1991)
1991, cover, Science Fiction Eye #8 (Winter 1991)
1991-2016, annual collages for the James Tiptree Jr. Award (later "Otherwise Award")
1991, cover, T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (Autonomedia 1991)
1993, cover, Her Smoke Rose Up from Supper
1994, cover, Immediatism: Essays by Hakim Bey (AK Press 1994)
1994, cover, Interactive Fantasy: The Journal of Role-Playing and Story-Making Systems #2
1995, cover & interior illustrations, The Raw Brunettes by Lorraine Scheine (Wordcraft of Oregon: Wordcraft Speculative Writers #8, 1995)
1995, illustrations in Pussycat Fever by Kathy Acker (with Diane DiMassa)
1996, cover, Neat Sheets: The Poetry of James Tiptree, Jr.
1996, cover, Reinventing Anarchy, Again, ed. by Howard J. Ehrlich
1996, cover, The Larger Earth: Descending Notes of a Grounded Astronaut: A Cycle of Poems by David Memmott (Permeable Press 1996)
1998, cover, Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. by Debbie Notkin (Edgewood Press 1998)
1998, cover, Seizing the Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook, ed. by Ron Sakolsky & Stephen Dunifer (AK Press 1998) (Cover collage, book design, & layout work)
1999, cover, Women of Other Worlds: Excursions Through Science Fiction and Feminism, ed. by Helen Merrick & Tess Williams (University of Western Australia Press, 1999)
2002, cover, Chunga #2
2003, cover, Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures by Michael Swanwick (Tachyon Publications 2003)
Articles and writings
“The Daily Battle”, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, #8 (Oct. / Nov. 1995), pp. 5-6
“Valerie Solanas” (biographical overview), in The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas (AK Press, 2013)
Reviews and criticism
“Review of Ecstatic Incisions“, Freedom, vol. 53 no. 19 (March 10, 1992).
Just Say No (July 1992)
Interzone, July 1992
Profane Existence #15 (Summer 1992)
“Ecstatic Incisions by Freddie Baer“, Socialist (Sept. 1992) – “Revolutionary coffee-table book of the month.”
Ray Violet, Tribune: Labour’s Independent Weekly, #18 (Sept. 1992)
Charlotte Ross, “Ecstatic Incisions“, Harpies & Quimes #3 (October 1992)
SF Weekly, May 20, 1993
Heaven Bone (#10)
GirlFrenzy #3, “Cut-Up Women: The Work of Freddie Baer and Anna Pedroza”, pp. 16-17
Allan Antliff, Anarchy and Art: From the Paris Commune to the Fall of the Berlin Wall (Arsenal Pulp Press 2007)
Neala Schleuning, Artpolitik: Social Anarchist Aesthetics in an Age of Fragmentation (Minor Compositions / Autonomedia, 2013), Chapter 8: Social Anarchist Aesthetics in an Age of Fragmentation, pp. 233-285.
Yetta Howard, “Unsuitable for Children? Adult-erated Age in Underground Graphic Narratives”, American Literature, v.90, n.2 (June 2018) (discussing Pussycat Fever, text by Kathy Acker and illustrations by Freddie Baer and Diane DiMassa).
Interviews
Thomas Murray Saté, “20 Questions for Freddie Baer“, Edinburgh Review, #89 (Spring 1993)
Further reading
Thomas Murray Saté, “20 Questions for Freddie Baer“, Edinburgh Review, #89 (Spring 1993)
Yetta Howard, “Unsuitable for Children? Adult-erated Age in Underground Graphic Narratives”, American Literature, v.90, n.2 (June 2018) (discussing Pussycat Fever, text by Kathy Acker and illustrations by Freddie Baer and Diane DiMassa).
Thank you for this
Rina Weisman (not verified) Sun, 11/23/2025 - 13:52
We knew Freddie from Wisconsin, and she had done some work as well for Tachyon, Jacob Weisman's company here in SF. She'll be missed.
Hi Rina, It would be great…
Laura Quilter (not verified) Tue, 11/25/2025 - 16:25
In reply to Thank you for this by Rina Weisman (not verified)
Hi Rina,
It would be great to get copies of any of the work she did with Tachyon, if you can locate the.
Laura Quilter (contact@freddiebaer.com, lquilter@gmail.com)
Add new comment