Baker Artist Portfolios

Working on paper lends itself to altering surface sizes easily. Sometimes an edge is removed and occasionally, entire paintings are torn down. Over 30 years, I have saved all the torn pieces regardless of size. I am  an avid list maker and they are eventually torn down too. The combined 'tiles' create a visual rewriting or reorganizing where nothing is lost, but instead transformed. Tearing down, sorting and re-using serve as metaphors for recreating and mapping  new courses in  art and  life. 

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.

jhana and the rats of james olds or 31 days/31 videos
Between June 25th-Aug. 7th 2011 Stephanie Barber moved her studio into the Baltimore Museum of Art where she created a new video each day in a central gallery open to museum visitors.

Jhana is a meditative state and James Olds is the protoneuroscientist who discovered the pleasure or reward center of the human brain by doing experiments on rats.

I am inspired by what it is to be human and animal, the sacred, the divine, Genesis, our past and our future, our wars, our psychology, and our relationship with and without nature. Within this body of work, that will continue throughout my career, each sculpture represents a part of me, what I believe it means to be human.

In my still lives, I arranged everyday objects into, hopefully, compelling compositions. In my morning contemplations, I painted the tea bag I used each day, building the days up in each work. Similarly, I also painted the peel of the banana I ate each day, until I had a week's worth.

"Let there be...," and then there was...Man was born from the Earth. Here I meditate on my own birth from the clay I was molded from to this living being caught between clarity and the blindness or veil that's been cast over our eyes once we lose our innocence.

The idea of what I call meditation balls came out of a spiritual direction. While driving home, I had an epiphany . I wanted to make something as a reminder of the insight I had received. I conceieved the idea of a ball inscribed with scripture, which rattled and could be held in the hands during prayer or meditation as a centering device. For me, the weight of the ball in my hands serves to bring my mind back to center when it wanders.