When we say that Suzanne Wolf is a baseball painter, we mean that literally.  That is, she paints portraits of players, and baseballs are her canvases.  Of course, Wolf has produced baseball paintings on canvas and on porcelain plates too for that matter, but painting official National and American League baseballs is her specialty, and no one who sees them in person never doubts that her miniature portraits on cowhide are anything but bona fide works of art.

 How did Wolf come to be the Queen of Painted Baseballs?  Well, it's a longish story but one well worth the telling that begins (in early) 1956 when Suzanne was born in Indianapolis, Indiana.  She grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family that provided no support whatsoever for her artistic ambitions.  Wolf's parents approved of musical training for their children because music was an integral part of their Church services; consequently, Suzanne learned to play the piano and the clarinet.  However, since there was no art in the Wolfs' church, the Wolfs figured there need not be any room in Suzanne's world for it either.  Ironically, an art teacher lived next door to the Wolfs, and Suzanne remembers that "all the neighborhood kids took lessons from her except me."  Undaunted, Suzanne began the lengthy process of self-instruction.  Around the age of 12 she bought a copy of Walter Foster's "How to Draw for Fashion," and she spent countless hours working with this $2 book, learning the basic elements of drawing.

After high school, Wolf worked a civil service job for a few years but then decided to follow her dream.  She enrolled in the fine arts program at Indiana Central University.  Her stay there lasted only a year.  Suzanne discovered that the other art students were simply too far ahead of her in everything but drawing.  Making matters worse, she didn't understand the terminology (and the concepts behind it) the teachers used in constructively criticizing her work; saying, for example, that her work lacked "painterly technique."  The last straw came when a professor told her that "Everything you do looks like a Kleenex box."  This was the professor's tactless way of saying that Wolf had a bent towards commercial art.  Whatever the professor's intention, the remark had the effect of convincing Wolf that she couldn't compete as a fine artist.  Wolf put away her art supplies, moved to Chicago, and began a succession of civil service jobs.

Wolf eventually went to work in private industry, for a Chicago computer services company, and met her husband on the job.  Because the company had a policy against spouses working together, Suzanne left the company and decided, with her husband's encouragement, to complete her college degree.  Three years later she graduated with honors from George Williams College.  Her degree was in social studies with a concentration in management studies.

1984 turned out to be a pivotal year for Suzanne Wolf.  The Cubs were winning the National League East (their first championship of any kind since 1945), and that summer Wolf read a magazine article that rekindled her desire to be an artist.  "It was in something like People Magazine," says Wolf.   "It had a photo of a baseball with a player's face painted on it and a story about the woman who did it.  Well, I thought I'd try it too.  I was more interested in the art side of it than the baseball, but I thought it was a great combination.  So, I taught myself how to paint, how to mix colors...everything I needed to know in order to paint a portrait, not just draw one.  I had some photos of cubs players that some business around town had given out free, and I used them as references.  The first ball I did was of Jody Davis, and I thought it looked pretty good, so I did some more...of Leon Durham, Ron Cey, Larry Bowa, and Rick Sutcliffe."

And then the San Diego Padres beat the Cubs in the playoffs.  Bryant Gumbel interviewed two of the victors, Goose Gossage and Steve Garvey, on The Today Show, and when he said, "Guys, you broke our hearts," Wolf felt as if he'd taken the words right out of her mouth.  She painted Gumbel, wearing a cubs hat, on a baseball and sent it to him.  A few days later Wolf was only halfway paying attention to the show when Gumbel started talking about the ball.  He mentioned Wolf by name and asked an assistant to bring the ball over.  Willard Scott took a look at it and said, "That's you alright, Bryant."

Despite such publicity, Wolf remained quite undiscovered and unmarketed.  She managed to place some of her painted baseballs on consignment in sporting goods stores around town, but they didn't sell.  The story and Wolf's career might have ended there if one of the store owners hadn't shown Wolf a copy of Sports Collectors Digest.  Wolf instantly realized that she would find her market among SCD readers or nowhere, so she took out a subscription and two short classified ads.  The response was immediate and gratifying.  Collectors from all over the country commissioned painted balls, and several dealers began to represent her at card shows.  She was also "discovered" by Spitball.  Her pen & ink drawings have illustrated several of the magazine's short stories; her Joe Morgan oil painting (under her former name Bogyo) received a "Best of Show" Award at Spitball's art exhibit celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Big Red Machine's sweep of the 1976 post-season; and she was named one of Spitball's Contributing Artists when the magazine received its dramatic facelift in 1993.

Wolf has been so successful at her art that she has painted a total of 1,035 (and counting) baseballs over the past ten years.  In recent years a great deal of Wolf's output has been bought by Wolf's biggest fans:  Larry Bennett of Marshall, Michigan, and Jim Peterson of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  A teacher and part-time baseball card dealer, Bennett has become the middleman between Wolf and the public, while Peterson  has amassed the largest (and ever-growing) collection of Wolf baseball's in existence.  Wolf's painted baseballs are especially popular with autograph collectors who appreciate the fact that a Wolf portrait turns an ordinary autographed ball into a one-of-a-kind work of art and collectible.  She estimates that the average ball takes between two and four hours to complete; however, she maximizes her time by working on several balls (up to a dozen) at once, taking each ball through one stage before moving onto the next stage.  Wolf's standard technique is to draw a portrait in colored pencil first and then to go over it with washes of acrylic color.  The acrylic acts as a fixative, preventing the image from smearing or rubbing off.  Her final stage is to coat the portrait with a thin layer of varnish.  Wolf uses only first-quality materials and prefers to work from a photo selected by the client.

It may seem strange at first, portraits painted on baseballs, but a plain baseball is itself a beautiful object.  Suzanne Wolf's vocation is the enhancement of that inherent beauty.  And while ten years is a long time to devote to such a painstaking occupation, Wolf has no intention of putting away her paint brushes.  What she does is too important to us and to herself.  "It's the way I feel when I'm painting that keeps me sane in this crazy world," she says.  "Painting reminds me of the ten years I spent learning to do what I always wanted to do, which is to be an artist."  (Mike Shannon)