Baker Artist Portfolios

BIO

Sojourning on the border with Mexico for the ten years prior to my accepting a teaching position at Delaware State University in Dover, my former contemplative imagery ruminating on natural forms and processes grew more topical. My current sculpture reflects this change of focus presenting issues on the lack of effective dialogue in public discourse, the privilege of class, the inequality of wealth, and marginalization by gender or ethnicity.  Those sensitivities have not faded and are manifest in the portfolio of this proposal. I want my work is to stimulate dialogue and awareness of contemporary critical issues.

Having taught in four colleges for the 33 years (presently retired from teaching and working as a full time sculptor), I enjoy communicating. With my sculptures, I use a narrative of social concern. Employing constructed and found forms, my sculpted and assembled works become poetic allusions incorporating the recognizable attributes of natural and manufactured objects. Irony plays a role in these works. I passionately pursuit relevant political and esthetic issues to articulate a polemic framed within a work.
I want my work to stimulate dialogue and awareness of contemporary critical issues.  We, as Americans, need to discuss contemporary topical issues which are considered socially inappropriate; those issues are politics (what does government need to do and for whom?), religion (what religious traditions support progressive development and what persuasions are regressive in the democracy?) and money (what is the role of financial control in the vitality of the democracy?).