Jeffrey T. Baker

My wife and I asked Portland comic artist Jason Rainey to create a bit of Dr. Who fan art as a gift for a family member this Christmas. The only stipulation was that it represent the Weeping Angels and, if possible, contain River Song as well as the good Doctor. Needless to say, we were so thrilled with the result that it was hard to part with it.

This experience got me thinking though. . . thinking back to the days when I devoured comic books as a kid, and to one series in particular that Marvel put out called What If? which essentially explored the possibility of alternate scenarios for different characters and plot lines in their most popular titles. I was thinking about this series because a sort of What If? scenario had tickled my consciousness. Try this one on for size. . .

What if everyone in 2012 decided to commission just one piece of original artwork from an artist to give as a gift next holiday season? Perhaps it wouldn't even need to be related only to commissions. . . what if everyone in 2012 simply decided to purchase one piece or original artwork to give as a gift next holiday season? What sort of neo-Renaissance might occur the world over if everyone simply opted for art rather than designer socks or tiny vials of scented liquid?

Now I realize that the likelihood of such a sea change in the demand for original art is every bit as far fetched as the wildest of What If? stories, but I can say from recent personal experience that the most talked about Christmas present in our family this past season was not a disposable mass-produced product. In fact, the one gift I'm confident will still be around, remembered, and talked about twenty years from now is one that had no middlemen, wasn't shipped or on sale, couldn't be found anywhere else in the world, and cannot be Googled. 

In coordination with many a talented maker (see list below) at the historic Troy Laundry Artist's Studio Co-Op, I will be throwing wide the studio doors on the 2nd and 3rd of December to share works-in-progress and (hopefully) sell some past work. Please tell your friends, join me for a bit of refreshment, and take some time to enjoy the creative efforts of fifteen artists on two levels of this fantastic old Portland laundry building.

Just two works currently in process at the studio. . . 

Morning Draught
acrylic, toner, and graphite on panel
24" x 36.25", 2009 — $1,500

In an earlier post I discussed the need for always photographing your work as soon as it was completed. . . this work was, in part, the catalyst for those thoughts, as it was completed in 2009 but not documented until spring of 2011. 

Morning Draught also has the distinction of being one of the few works in the past years that I haven't sealed with cold wax medium. This decision causes me to treat it exceedingly tenderly when I move it around, but I love it all the more for its delicacy. There's a softness to the tones of graphite (which are being held in place by a few layers of Lascaux fixative only) that reveal something very essential about these linear blades of grass.

Pythia's Prospect
acrylic, toner, conté crayon, and wax on panel
6.75" square, 2011 — $330

What began as a process experiment took on a peculiar gravity as I proceeded to obliterate, and then bring back, the wind strewn hiss of a geyser.

I will make the assumption that the source material is from Yellowstone, but that is my default answer for any photo I own that contains geysers (and yes, I have found many more than one such image). Nevertheless, it was the thought of someone holding their head over such a noxious orifice to obtain insight into the fickly nature of gods that most captured my imagination.

Hence the (rather heavy-handed) title.

Miasma
acrylic, toner, watercolor, graphite and wax on panel
6.75" square, 2011 — $330 

This was not the image it was intended to be, but many creative acts often diverge from the staid safety of intention.

I allowed things to get a bit messy. The powdered graphite seeped into glazes of acrylic and reactivated a buried layer of watercolor. What was supposed to be a simple plume became a noxious spill into the majority of the composition. Like most of my forays into color (which have been increasing of late) I find myself disillusioned with any color that is too easily named, so I allow dry mediums such as pastel and charcoal to push them into powdery tints and tones. Obviously, there is a correlation between an image of particulate haze and the application of that haze with a powdery particulate.

What sort of art might you expect to find in a three-story, ten bedroom, luxury beach house get-a-way? In one word: plenty. Here's a partial inventory of the works on display in one such house along the Outer Banks of North Carolina. . .

• a poly-chromed balsa wood tug boat balancing precariously on two wooden balls and missing at least five tires
  
• one abstract acrylic painting photographed and printed on board with an umber orange sky and cream scumbled ground separated by a blue line leaking blood down the left side of the composition (the upper right corner of the sky also pierced and bleeding towards land)— all coated with a pebbly application of gel medium and floating in open black frame
  
• two teapot sized ceramic shells with milky smooth cavities
  
• Photoshopped mono print triptych of palm tree crowns matted in a frame meant to emulate the texture of a palm trunk
  
• mounted print of gel medium rendered palm tree stoically saluting a white nothingness bordered in a distressed Venetian frieze of botanical shapes
  
• black glass planter with torn sheets of gold leaf entombed below the surface
  
• 4' canvas print of a painting showing a Tuscan village tucked among rolling hills: with real paint highlights applied on top to emphasize sun washed roof lines and flowery fields
  
• earthenware jellybean-shaped vase with black nipple
  
• two cast plastic Florentine roundels with antique bronze finish in similarly finished frames (like ficticious spoila from the ceiling of an Old World ballroom; very opulent)
  
• black and gold paper collage with cardboard bits arranged in gridded pattern before painted with gold and mounted on a generous expanse of black paper (signed in gold pen with pink marble mat and bronzed frame)
  
• botanical watercolor reproduction of a lemon yellow tropical flower with the artist's signature mostly obscured by off-center and crooked maroon mat
  
• three poly-chromed ceramic fish on wooden plinths
  
• ceramic cast of a wicker basket with dark brown undertone accented with rubbed gold paint on high points (and gold glitter on bottom of the interior)
  
• two white serving trays displayed on end with primary and secondary color stripes framing a center image of a schooner and white beach lounge chair in the shoals, respectively
  
• two inkjet printouts of Roman planters with ripped edges (the edges painted black) floating over carved styrofoam blocks painted to resemble stone, all of which sits atop gloss black corrugated card stock in a shadowbox with gray marbled mats and burnished white gold frames