Baker Artist Portfolios

Mills, power plants, and aggregate manufacturing remain the backbone of American industry and the soft underbelly of environmental malfeasance. Processing mills, coal burning plants, and cement works present a complex of structures and hardware that litter the American landscape with reminders of the fragile balance underpinning ecosystems. They are the product of progress and pivotal to much of the controversy surrounding renewable energy subsidies. Their influence remains stamped on the terrain and reflects the paradoxical relationship man has to his environment.

 

Farming represents a vestige of our agrarian past. There is a romantic nostalgia we harbor for working the land that distorts the truly difficult lifestyle the vocation shoulders. Farmers share a characteristic that the writer Cheryl Strayed attributed to the miner: Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig. A farmer’s job is never done. Painters have the same sense of perseverance: just paint.