Baker Artist Portfolios

A Rand McNally road map of the United States, excised by hand with an Xacto knife and painted with white-out. The only color that remains on the map are the highways. This piece visually proposes (without re-naming) the reorganization of the United States by visible boundaries: its roads.

Ephemera from the artist's life, 1978 - 2010, refrigerator, magnets. A refrigerator made into a commemoration of my life. Taking the personalization of an everyday object to an extreme. Many of the events are held together by magnets and string in the shape of the Orion constellation. Part of the exhibition "Reinventing History" at the GASA House, Reno, Nevada, curated by Jen Graham.

A tunnel constructed in the basement of the Graduate Arts Students Association (GASA) House, near the University of Nevada, Reno on the occasion of the "Post 'Podium Results Show' Show." Constructed of art world ephemera staples and chicken wire, this tunnel forces people to crawl through a paper space that gets increasingly smaller as it goes backwards. With all images on the inside and all textual information on the outside, it is a sister piece to "Trimmed Fat," (see separate entry) on view in another exhibition at that same time.

Maps cut by hand, suspended from the wall by tacks, nails, pins, and / or magnets. Information that has been removed allows for the assignment of new information by the viewer. Holes in the work suggest an idea of information that has yet to be discovered.

Cut maps, reversed. Light projecting through the holes of the map hits the white wall on which it is mounted, and bounces back the color from the reverse side of the map to show the color on the wall. As the quality of light changes in the space, the intensity of the colors seen changes.

Push pins and tacks recreating imagery found in the Chauvet Cave, installed in the Assistant to the Director's cubicle in the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The piece was donated to the museum on the condition that it only be removed by the person who worked at that desk, thus recreating through natural use the disintegration of artwork that is also taking place in the caves in France.

A slightly larger-than-life-sized cow made out of art world ephemera and staples. There was no internal structure - it was completely held together by the placement of postcards and staples. Its exterior featured all of the information and text, while the interior was filled with images. It was possible to see inside of it, but not to enter it.

A two-story tall cut paper piece made for the Creative Alliance's exterior window. This piece was my contribution to the resident artist group exhibition "Subterfuge" that coincided with the annual Open Studios event. It represents four different views of the night sky projected onto sections of the paper with the information cut out (representations of various stars, their names, and the constellations they help to form). The work plays with distortions in information.

The second part of my 2011 thesis exhibition, "Following," at the University of Nevada, Reno - this interactive sound installation took place in the Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery where "Constellated Space" took place. It transposed the ceramic tile grid of the gallery floor onto a Rand-McNally road map of the greater Reno Area. Traveling out to sections of this transposed grid, I took whatever sound recordings I could manage to gather from throughout the entire map over the course of 3 - 4 months.

As one part of my 2011 thesis exhibition at the University of Nevada, Reno, I gathered volunteers to help me outline in "Deep Space" blue all of the visible errors in the surface of the gallery's walls. The remaining space was filled in to create a constellation of the gallery's exhibition history as visible through the "mistakes" in wall repair. 12 walls spread out over 3 different gallery spaces were detailed in this fashion, highlighting the various activities of over 50 years of exhibition history. Over 80 students volunteered to help identify marks in this process.