Baker Artist Portfolios

These experimental works use simple, conventional, and overlooked materials in innovative ways. Discarded silkscreen is used instead of paint to make flesh, paint is used to stain distressed silk. Experiments with texture and agitation of materials serve to raise questions about the aftermath of abuse in all its forms. The title suggests the need for a Spiritual life and relationship with a Protector and Friend in the wake of hardship.

Created from gleaned scraps of transparent cloth as a painting medium, these images are the result of the feelings of scarcity and loss I experienced and re-experienced in transitional phases of grief.

Mixed Media Installation, an attempt to recreate the porch from the home that I grew up in paired with a video of myself dancing with a paper mache sculpture of my childhood home. Installation includes 309 hand pulled transfer prints mimicking shingles with asbestos. Installation was also used as a set for more video work.

These collages allude to the disruption of civil discourse brought about by technological advances in "communication" and how techno-communication equipment imposes upon the landscape.

The work in this series on paper is based upon my recent trip to Japan. I love to travel but this trip was fraught with uncertainty due to the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear explosions that occurred while I was there in March. As I travel, I record through images and words my experience with the people, sites, and atmosphere; thus producing an artist journal.

As the viewer shifts positions, the light changes, time passes, and the luster of the jewel-like copper surface fluctuates, exposing layers of images not immediately seen. The abstract and the concrete, the expected and the unexpected combine to convey a complex narrative. Mystery and secrets worked and woven with paint, metals, canvas, and tacks into layers slowly revealed to the viewer. If you could look under the layers perhaps you would find several paintings, revealing many stories.

As a visual storyteller, I weave together personal narratives; private dreams and internalized landscapes. Copper sheets are hand embossed, washed with acid, the resulting patina cured then sealed, and finally nailed over a wooden support and painted. The images presented in part rely on an element of chance due to the materials employed. The acid washes are subject in color and shape to the temperature, humidity and my application. I allow the sensuous marks and stains formed by the acid to help determine the images that emerge.

Book of collages in sequence. 7"h x 9"w x 1"d. Handmade book, collage, stamped letters, objects.  This book was a gift for my wife. 

In collaboration with Ricardo Contreras, A Glimpse Through visualizes a weak point where we might briefly glimpse another universe, another dimension, another timeline. The images interfere with one another, a glimmer of two universes or two moments, at once.