Baker Artist Portfolios

Artist Statement: Steven Marc Shapiro   

Overview:  My work is informed by twenty years of pursuing architecture, being immersed in the process of design and construction, and the challenges of designing with both man-made and natural materials. My current work is focused on non-objective abstraction, but also echoes my experiences designing the spaces, forms, and edifices for buildings. However, the work is also reflective of many years attending to the challenges of figurative and narrative painting, still-life, my decades of work teaching architecture and art. I feel the common thread of these varying experiences is an unyielding passion for the process of design, a love of layering and manipulating form and an unapologetic devotion to expressing place, object, and image through design.

Growing up in a home filled with original paintings by my uncle influenced my earliest ambitions to become an artist as did my education in Baltimore City public schools where there was the opportunity to focus on art in high school. During this time I fell under the spell of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright which ultimately led me to my college studies in Architecture which profoundly shaped my belief that art. could shape the world as well as reflect it. After nearly five decades of work in all sorts of mediums; painting, sculpture, ceramics, drawing and architecture I have evolved a body of work that draws from all of these but where architecture is the primary training and painting is the primary mode of expression.  I tend to express myself in both two and three dimensions with a mixture of media in a single work. I see drawing and painting as integrated efforts. I make few, if any, distinctions between architecture and fine art.

My training as an architect was entrenched in the art of problem solving and the practical considerations of construction, site, and functionality. These foundations still influence my work, if in somewhat transformed ways. I often approach the canvas, the paper, the ball of clay as a kind of site and the subject as a program of use or functionality. My paints and tools are like the elements of construction. My process is much like that of an architect as I confront my paintings and sculptures through planning and design. Ironically, I once approached my buildings very much like a painter.

Early Years:
When I was a very young child, like many children, I experienced bouts of loneliness and despair. Without a lot of friends, parents who worked outside the home, and older siblings who were often not around, I was on my own a great deal. I took comfort in drawing, sometimes copying the work of artists I liked and sometimes inventing my own imaginative compositions which often involved a house, a tree, a stylized person or two. I also found myself often wandering the world of my uncles, seascapes and street scenes of Baltimore that hung throughout our home. I wasn't much of a reader as a child, so drawing, painting and architectural design became my refuge, a place to spend hours joyfully inventing and imagining new worlds where I was not alone. That creative play has remained at the heart of my work still showing itself in the many inventions found in my sketchbook/journals.  During my first year in college, I took a class on the history of art and architecture which challenged me to see the elements of human settlement as expressions of meaning about society, politics, religion and culture. The desire to make something that was not only beautiful to the eye but also meaningful to the spirit became a powerful force in my life. It has never left me. Even when I am wrestling with the work of abstraction, I am concerned with how others might care about it. If nothing else, I hope they can relate to the joy, energy and playfulness out of which it grows.
As an architect, I learned to sketch concepts for projects, to examine multiple solutions to a problem, and to develop projects literally in layers of drawings developed over time subjected to critical review by myself and others. That process became ingrained in my methodology. Years later when I turned my focus to painting and sculpture, finding a way to continue this process was natural to my thinking. Eventually it transformed into the work of my sketchbook/journals which underpin my work as an artist.
 
Current Work:
These last three years have been a time marked by change. During the lockdowns that came with the COVID crises, I found myself not only with more time to consider my work, but also in a strange place where a certain chasm had opened before me. It seemed that life had changed and would not likely be exactly as it was before. Several life altering events occurred at this time. After forty years I gave up teaching, moved my home and studio of fifteen years to new ones, and welcomed my first grandchild into my life.  All of this coupled with the isolation that came with the pandemic forced me in a peculiar way to reconsider the direction and implications of my work. I had not prepared for this moment of change. It felt like it had been thrust upon me. After several false starts, planning a work regimen, a daily goal commitment and a series of small works I thought would lead to a breakthrough in consciousness, I came to the realization that something else was needed. Ideas for projects began to emerge first slowly and then quickly, bubbling to the surface of my thoughts. Sorting and prioritizing them became a concern. I needed a way to contain them. From that developed the idea for the folio, a larger than usual sketchbook journal. I granted myself a year to review, edit and distill the work, ideas and images contained in the paintings, sculptures and sketchbook/journal of the past five decades. I am seeking to understand where I’ve been to know where I am meant to go next. But it wouldn't be enough just to examine the former work and collected ideas within the sketchbook/journals. I needed new work, new paintings to test the new terrain. My solution to this dilemma was to challenge myself to a yearlong exploration and to arbitrarily assign one month to complete each new work for a year. I was looking for a way to work without constraints or expectations but with enough structure to encourage advancement of the work.   The one work has evolved into three works a month but each month there id a particular piece that has dominated my attention. When I created this project, I created some ground rules for myself.  I declared that any method, materials, or subject was acceptable and as a body of work I would not insist that they be similar in these aspects either.  The goal was to maximize freedom within my creative search. The primary goal of all of this was to become a witness to my own process. The folio and the monthly artworks together were intended toward that goal.
Where I will wind up in June of 2023, a year from when this project began, I don't know and I have purposefully tried to avoid predicting the outcome.  I'm here for the ride wherever it takes me.