With great sadness, I mark the passing this week of Erica Aitken, a wonderful woman who has touched so many of us with her guiding light, boundless compassion, and enduring love for humanity.
I first met Erica when she spent weekends exploring digital tools for creating multimedia and digital art in its infancy. Back then my world view was more starkly black and white, and when she shared her enjoyment of the book The Joy Luck Club, my initial response - that the tome was an Asian sellout for fame and fortune - took her by surprise. This sparked a decades long discussion of culture, racism, equality, feminism , and all the meaningful issues that make up humanity. She taught me nuance in words and actions. She offered kindness and grace to all.
We learned from each other, gained a deeper understanding and appreciation for the different lived experiences that shaped each member of our multi-faceted society, and most importantly, loved each other for who we are.
Erica was a moral guiding light and always strived to do not the “right” thing, not the “easy” thing, but the “good” thing. She sought to understand and champion the less fortunate, the marginalized, the voiceless and invisible people that the more fortunate chose to ignore for their own comfort and mental complacency. She was introspective, and examined her own motivations and biases in order to become a better, more passionate advocate for human compassion in both grassroots efforts as well as national ones.
In the past few years, her social activism expressed itself deeply in her art and she found success as more galleries exhibited her pieces. She was over the moon as these opportunities gave her a voice to initiate discussions on the societal ills that afflict our fragmented humanity. It was deeply important to her that we never shy away from the hard uncomfortable conversations necessary to find solutions.
Erica brought the same passion to her professional sphere. She started Rods and Cones over 2 decades ago and invited me to come on the journey with her. We laughed, we cried, and together we joined and expanded a wonderful community of print lovers, of designers, of color wielders, and workflow architects. In an industry mostly bereft of female voices, she found a sisterhood and together they continued to pave the way for others to follow, as they followed in the footsteps of those women who came before them. She served on community boards, co-founded specialty umbrella groups, and sought out innovations to bring an admittedly shrinking industry (print!) into the modern world. She tirelessly advocated for environmentally friendly solutions and efficiencies before it became fashionable to do so.
Erica touched many lives and for all those fortunate to know her, we are all the better for it. She was not perfect but she was self-aware and sought to always grow, and change, and not just for her own personal gain, but to contribute and give back to the community because to her the world is our one and only community. She loved life for its diversity and boundless variety.
