Baker Artist Portfolios

Large clusters made of fabric. These refrece domestic textile patterning and household fabric useage.

I organize and exhibit my drawings in clusters so they have conversations with eachother.

Chroma is an ongoing collaboration between myself and Oakland Artist Lisa Solomon. We crowd source small colorful objects and arrange them by color.

A series of paintings based on the patterns found in polar ice

One autumn day, while I was photographing at my favorite spot on Morgan Run Creek, I watched a brightly colored maple leaf float by, flipping and twisting as it was carried over and around the obstacles in the creek. I had been looking for something to experiment with, so I started to photograph the leaves, one by one, as they were carried past me. The exposures captured not only the leaves, but also the colors of the creek bed, and even the turbulence of the water itself. Some of the photos look like a leaf "portrait"; other images seem almost completely abstract.

I live in a rural area of Maryland, and spend quite a bit of time outdoors with my camera. I find my best opportunities with the simplest objects: a single leaf, duck feathers, a fallen tree trunk. I'm attracted to these small, sometimes abstract pieces of nature, which often go unnoticed.

If you've already read about my "Ice" project, you're probably wondering how much time I spend at Morgan Run Creek. In a word: lots. It's only three miles from home, and I'm often the only person in the area of the creek where I photograph, especially when the temperature is in the single digits. It's a very tranquil place to visit.

I love being able to create photos that the eye and brain can't capture. When I started exploring photography in college, I did it by shooting sporting events, freezing the action on the field with a fast shutter speed. Now, I've started to go in the opposite direction, using a long exposure to allow the subject's motion to "paint" itself onto the image. There are few better subjects for that than a carnival ride, with hundreds of lights moving through the night and changing color several times each second. I'm almost always surprised, and sometimes amazed, by the end result.

Most of these photographs were taken at the Steamtown National Historic Site, in my hometown of Scranton, PA. Whenever I visit family, I try to reserve some time to wander around the yard, appreciating the technology of the past century and a half. Many of the pieces are deteriorating due to a lack of funds to care for them, much like the city of Scranton itself. While the rust, peeling paint, and weathered wood present excellent opportunities for a photographer, there's also a bit of sadness in knowing that few of these locomotives and rail cars will ever be restored.

I've had opportunities in the past year to explore cityscapes in the eastern United States, and I'm excited by the images I've been able to produce in such a short time. My only disappointment is that the amount of time devoted to photography during these visits was not nearly enough to capture all of the amazing structures I saw. I'm planning more road trips. :)