Artist Sonia Denise Tassin, known to most by her middle name Denise, died Sept. 16, 2024 surrounded by her family at Sinai Hospital, Baltimore, Md. She was 57. The cause was an inexorable cascade of events that had started with a bee or wasp sting eleven days earlier. Despite immediate life saving efforts, she did not recover.

Drawings, paintings, and prints by Denise Tassin are held in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), Donald S. Levinson Collection at Sheppard Pratt Health System, University of Baltimore, McNeese State University, and Southern Methodist University. Among professional honors and awards, her work was recognized by the Maryland State Arts Council with seven Individual Artist Fellowships in the areas of drawing, installation, and painting. Over the course of her artistic career, Denise was also a teacher, curator, and board member.

Denise’s art is rooted in patterns of everyday life, the natural world and found objects by the hundreds and thousands, and the process by which these gestures and inspiration become a work of art. Denise’s “Drawings by Worms (Red),” for example, was included in the BMA’s 2015 exhibition “On Paper: Spin, Crinkle, Pluck.” To make these nuanced works on paper, Denise purchased live bait at her favorite fishing and tackle shop on Eastern Avenue, dipped each worm in food coloring, and gently rinsed them when their work was done to release back in into nature.

Beyond the art by worms, the astonishing range of Denise’s work varies from delicate ink drawings on Necco wafers, guitar picks, and commercial paint chips to more traditional drawing and painting on paper, canvas, plywood, and Styrofoam; fishing weight drawing machines; intricate miniature dioramas; organic assemblages built from thousands of paper cutouts; a life-size cardboard art house; and larger-than-life-size outdoor installations incorporating sticky paintings, bottlecaps, foamcore children’s book character drawings, a field of plastic, and inflatable beach floats, among other elements. She also collaborated with other visual artists, musicians, and dancers, as well as with her mother, children, and nieces.

Her choice of drawing and painting materials is also deliberate and symbolizes important aspects of her life, from traditional artist materials to Stickum Special, beef liver, beet powder, candy, iodine, Mercurochrome, Merthiolate, gentian violet, food coloring, hair dye, house paint, calamine lotion, indigo, and White Out, to name a few. 

Denise was a legendary collector of things. Many of these are lovingly arranged on floor-to-ceiling shelves, drawers, and flat files in her studio: natural objects; washed up plastic and other debris; small, unusual toys and kitchen items; stickers; candy wrappers; twist ties; lists and labels; medication; holiday decorations; office and craft supplies; artificial flowers. Washington Post art critic Michael O’Sullivan observed that “Tassin is an accumulator.” (“In the Right ‘Place’ At the Right Time,” March 1, 2007). Actually, more fully and to the joy of Denise’s family and friends, O’Sullivan wrote, “Like a walking lint roller, Tassin is an accumulator, creating a record of sorts of not just where she has been, but of whose lives she has touched.” 

The only child of the late Mary Lee Byrd and the late Roland M. Tassin Jr., Denise was born in Lake Charles, La., Oct. 6, 1966. Her mother worked later in life in elder care. Her father was an electrician, mostly working in local petrochemical plants. Denise was brought up in Lake Charles in large measure by both her maternal and paternal grandparents, Mae Bell (Lamon) and Cecil G. Byrd, and Enid Marie (Reynaud) and Roland M. Tassin Sr., to whom she remained deeply devoted her entire life.

Denise graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in drawing, painting, and ceramics from McNeese State University, Lake Charles, La. (1989), and a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas (1991). She moved to Baltimore in 1991, starting out as an assistant in the offices of O’Conor, Piper and Flynn. Over the next 26 years, she worked for Baltimore City’s Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Art and Culture (MACAC), Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, Thomas Segal Gallery, and Clair Zamoiski Segal LLC, a fundraising consulting business.

Denise met her wife, Jennifer Mange, in 1998 at Culture Bowl, then Baltimore City’s annual event where arts and culture organizations got together to field ad hoc teams for a fun night of duckpin bowling at Southway Bowling Center, the Federal Hill neighborhood’s historic lanes where Babe Ruth once played. Denise was part of the MACAC team, and Jennifer had just started a job at the Walters Art Museum. Denise and Jennifer married in 2010 in Amherst, Mass., where Jennifer grew up, in a backyard ceremony at Jennifer’s parents’ house. In March 2012, Denise and Jennifer became a family with their two dear children, Shaleigh and Wren, through Louisiana intra-family adoption when both girls were toddlers. Jennifer, Shaleigh, and Wren were shining stars in Denise’s life.

Denise was adventurous and funny. In addition to art as an everyday part of life, she loved road trips, music, reading, gardening, fishing and crabbing, and playing canasta with her wife and family and Uno with her children. Denise will be remembered for her cooking in large amounts, including some of her family’s favorites of dirty rice, red beans and rice, gumbo, and cornbread (not too sweet), and her festive party trays of condiments. She loved crawfish, boudin, shrimp, andouille sausage, and jalapeno peppers. Never without her heat, Denise kept pepper, salt, and a bottle of hot sauce in the driver’s side door of her car.

In addition to her wife and two daughters, Denise is survived by her maternal siblings, Kelly (Joe) Bagwell of Silver Creek, Miss., Sherry (Chris) Kramer of Iowa, La., Emma Odeal Crysel of Lacassine, La., and paternal siblings Melissa (Dave) Leger of Lake Charles, La., Melinda (Craig) Thibodeaux of Lake Charles, La., and Paul (Jennifer) Tassin of Lafayette, La.; her dear nieces and nephews, and grand-nieces and grand-nephews. She leaves her father’s wife, Beverly Tassin, and Beverly’s children, Christie Gotreaux and Robert Andrepont and their families. She leaves her Aunt Sonia (Tassin) Thibodeaux of Lafayette, La. and cousins Michael Thibodeaux of Longville, La., Steven Thibodeaux of Ignacio, Colo., Susan Thibodeaux-Harris of Houston, Texas, Cheryl Borden of Moss Bluff, La., David Thibodeaux of Houston, Texas and their families, as well as parents-in-law, Elaine (Johansen) and Arthur Mange of Amherst, Mass., and brothers-in-law, Steven Mange of Raleigh, N.C., and Paul Mange Johansen (Katrina Mattson) of Pittsfield, Mass. and their families.

Denise was preceded in death by her parents, grandparents, and her uncle, O.J. Thibodeaux and stepfather, Harvey Crysel.

A service in remembrance of Denise’s life will be held Tuesday, Oct. 29, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218. In lieu of flowers, please consider a charitable contribution in Denise’s memory to your favorite arts or nature nonprofit. There will be remembrances at a later date in Louisiana, and in Amherst, Mass. where there will be a burial at Wildwood Cemetery.