Baker Artist Portfolios

In January of 2009 I drove across the country from Baltimore to Portland Oregon.  When I wasn’t behind the wheel, I was documenting the landscape in hundreds of photos. These images played in my head for almost four years. Specifically, the dramatic landscape of the Southwestern leg of our travels, and the interesting juxtaposition of man-made interruptions to these amazing big sky vistas.

Inspired by the color studies of Josef Albers, these paintings explore the color relationships and palette of those American Southwest landscapes.

The playwright Erik Ehn writes "The unspeakable is speakable if we admit to the viability of the word smashed open." I use puppetry and my art to investigate important issues in the world. These two projects, one of which is ongoing, investigate the effects of genocide and asthma and losing the ability to breathe.

A puppet production of Erik Ehn's "The Architecture of Great Cathedrals". Ehn's play is the surreal story of an American prison guard on vacation in genocide scarred Guatamala.

Through object puppetry and music, Reverse Cascade tells the story of world renowned juggler Judy Finelli. Circus and juggling objects - balls, scarves, rings, clown noses - compose the characters and the world of a physically disciplined circus performer at the height of her career and as her body begins to betray her. Multiple sclerosis weighs her down and tears her apart, and she must figure out a new identity now that her tool for performance has vanished.

The Ascent series follows the forms on an upward climb into airy, sky-like negative space, as variations in movement and tension suggest infinite possibilities, overlaps, endings, and beginnings.

An earlier series of 6 inch square gouache paintings depicting neon signs. These were intended to be looser studies inspired by my larger pieces.

These paintings continue to become simpler, quieter, more still, somewhat uneasy, always invested in the changing conditions of light. I am constantly delighted by the banal visual elements of specific life circumstances, which so often become more compelling than one might expect. In this spirit—as ordinary, imperfect materials are momentarily engaged in awkwardly arresting formal relationships—issues of abstraction continue to be present in these paintings.

Our current cultural and political climate is fraught with tension, our lives increasingly more stressful, and the world more hectic. These truths demand our constant effort and attention. Thus, it’s important - and difficult – to take time to replenish our mental, physical, and emotional reservoirs. Nature offers humanity reprieve and provides pictorial and poetic narratives: a moss blanket comforts a broken soul; a nest bursts from and engulfs a birdcage; a large-scale, site-specific, wall mounted mandala comprised of a thousand golden lotus seedpods begs the viewers to find stillness in contemplation; a wall of multicolored baskets symbolize our need to constantly hold and care for ourselves, especially when difficult life experiences arise; and, two smaller mandalas – one made of seeds, the other of Bodhi (ficus religiosa) leaf skeletons – speak of ritual and meditation. Transformed into visual expressions, materials become metaphors for these psychological associations. Each work relies on the repetition and expansion of a fundamental unit to explore the relationship of the physical to the psychological. In all the works, less is more. Spare forms and conceptual innuendo swiftly carry each work into the bio-philosophic. They establish connections between the inside and outside of the body and mind to consider our larger relationship to the natural world. The  organic matter featured in this body of work metaphorically symbolize our collective human fragility; our need to be cared for and healed. 

JIM OPASIK'S Head series is based on imaginary subjects.

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JIM OPASIK's Head Series is based on imaginary subjects.