Baker Artist Portfolios

In 1989 my 7th grade class took a trip to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. It was already one of my favorite places to visit and I got to work. I used two rolls of film to photograph almost every specimen on display. My mom had them printed out at the drug store so that I could tape them all around my desk. They accompanied the Xerox copies of zoological and botanical plates from our old encyclopedias. I would sketch them incessantly, until I knew every joint, every fold, every tuft of fur and feather by heart. This fascination continued into adulthood. The bestiary would fill my sketchbooks, and later the lessons I shared with my students.

The Fantomeka are a menagerie pulled from life, imaginings, antique illustration and the ideation of children. They are the mundane and uncanny animals that we experiment upon, mythologize, and inhabit. They are the animals we spoke to as children, and the animals we eat. Creatures cocooned here amid the flora, fungi and fluid of their fabled habitats. Intentionally painted in both lifelike detail and as allegorical totem. They are illuminated in a burning panoply of colors to capture the eye. Like specimens under a microscope, stained to enhance the subjects under study.