Baker Artist Portfolios

Inspired by the James Baldwin essay "The Artist's Struggle", this new evening length work brings to physical life the words of selected poets. The central question focuses on 'what is the role of art in your life/your community?" This is a highly engaging evening of dance, poetry, music, song, audience dialogue, and haiku. I am really interested in involving the audience on multiple levels and for them not to be a passive viewer. The audience is warmly embraced throughout the evening and they willingly engage on deeper levels.

Cast and crew of 1 to few. Creativity is born in the eyes of limitation.

While my Music/Art videos don't use my paintings and drawings, I have used a number in my CD cover art.

These are drawn from 1973 to about 2000.

While I progressed as a composer, I found that my visual art had become obsessed with depression, becoming ever more futile.

It was around this time that I began to gradually change to photography - not so much as art, even though that did happen, but more to capture the world around me.

"To Love a Stranger," my first completed novel, went through about seven iterations (partial and full) and at least as many different titles before arriving at its current form. The book grew out of my training as a classical musician and my experiences of the backstage world of the classical symphony. I wanted to capture some of the vivid and larger-than-life characters I knew, and also translate the intense and often rapturous experience of hearing and making music to the page.

"Unraveled Souls" is a short story that came out of a small incident: my husband deciding to put his old electric keyboard out with the trash one night. Both he and I are musicians, and it felt strange to us to leave the keyboard out in the rain for the trash truck to pick up in the morning. I remember him saying goodbye to it as we went back into the house.

An assortment of left-over videos from the first three video projects listed above.

The third sample of  video statements created from 2018-2019, to help explain the twenty-nine stream-of-consciousness solo piano improvisations on my 2002 CD, "A Glassful of Doubt."

​First and foremost, I am a composer. With the advent of YouTube, it became apparent that adding visual imagery would garner more interest in my work then a static audio presentation. I’d already created a body of photography and visual art that I could draw on for this purpose. To this I added video clips, the purpose of which was to help listeners better understand the context of my vision.

The second sample of  video statements created in 2019, to accompany the thirty-three stream-of-consciousness solo piano improvisations on my 2001 CD, Keyboard Mania.

For more detail, visit "Keyboard Mania - Music/Video Imagery, part 1."

Before I began to use music as my primary means of expressing emotion, I used various sorts of painting and drawing.

I did a few oil and watercolors, but it was mainly acrylic and colored markers.

By the time 2000 had rolled around, I was reduced to just pen & ink scribblings, a sign of my mental state.

These are Art Videos, all using audio recordings of my piano performances. Again, the purpose of visuals are to help listeners better understand the context of my work. "… And I am agog at your improvisational skills on Keyboard Mania. I can only imagine all the hours & sweaty practice that you've logged to be able to shift gears in tempo & mood so effortlessly." – Craig Hankins, Hopkins University