Jeffrey T. Baker

For the past two weekends I've been part of a workshop exploring the new possibilities for printing using large format inkjet printers. At this point I've printed on wood veneer, aluminum flashing, the finest of rice papers, and some exceedingly luxurious clay-coated rag papers.

Like so many people (artists and non-artists alike), I've fought with desktop inkjet printers for years. They constituted a bit of affordable technology that always left me in a perpetual state of disappointment at the muddy prints that resulted. It was hard to even get a bit of text to look crisp, much less a sepia landscape. After this workshop I realize that the days of sub-standard output are gone but, as is true with all things digital, some potential for consternation still remains. 

As the instructor pointed out in the workshop, when things go wrong in the "analog" world (the darkroom for instance) the reaction is often a dogged acceptance in conjunction with a methodical effort to rectify the issue. When things go wrong in a digital lab however, the immediate reactions are: frustration, anger, and blame. Something in our expectation about the ease and convenience of technology make us very unwilling to accept any room for error from our machinery. 

The irony of this stance being (as any IT person is quick to point out) that the vast majority of the time any error that occurs is user error: the machines don't do anything that they aren't instructed to do by the user. While I've fumed at this observation before it is difficult to refute the logic. Ultimately, despite everyone's sub-conscious hope otherwise, the machine you use, be it computer or printer, cannot read your mind and divine your final intention. Instead, there must be a sort of mediated communication that happens between you, the machine, and all of the people involved with the creation of the hardware and software that seeks to facilitate that communication. 

I would hazard to say that as much as any issue in a computer lab may result from user error, an equal amount of responsibility could be given to design error which, ultimately, derives from communication errors between people. A computer programmer may think they know exactly what would be required in the ideal library circulation software (after all, they've used a library before), but this assumption rarely nets an elegant bit of software because it doesn't work with the end-consumer to provide the right tools, structure, and interface. The inability for this fact to be honored and recognized by so many hardware and software companies may speak to some of the inherent arrogance of technological innovation. . . but that is a topic for another time, and the mere fact that this is how today's blog post will end just further supports the observation that, when it comes to difficulties with all things digital the inevitable outcome is blame. That's just human nature.

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.

After a fantastic week helping an insightful group of students craft their own cinematic moments for Marylhurst University's Show:Tell Workshop (a workshop to support the efforts of teen artists and writers), I decided to treat myself with a viewing of Terence Malick's The Tree of Life. 

In my mind, Malick is the most important film maker in the world today. The Tree of Life does nothing to refute this. . .

To watch this film is to know the feeling of participating in a miracle. It is the finest film I've ever seen, and might be one of the most ambitious art works created in a very long time.

I would suggest that if you are to see no other film for the next five years then tonight, without hesitancy, go out, buy a ticket, and be a witness. . .

I guess if you're inclined to believe the LA Times or the Travel Channel website, then the place to visit in Portland is Voodoo Doughnuts. You see travelers in the Portland airport carrying the tell-tale pink boxes in lieu of actual carry-on luggage. In fact, while sitting at JFK airport in New York two weeks ago I saw a box of Voodoo being lovingly nudged through a disgruntled throng of morning commuters. And while I think Voodoo might say something truthful about Portland culture, I suspect it doesn't actually say much that is essential about Portland. 

If you want the essential Portland destination then I would refer you to SCRAP.

SCRAP sells recycled bits of detritus that its received as donations. While that may sound like countless other non-profit retail outlets you can think of, the big difference is that SCRAP sells its stuff (for lack of a better word) at ridiculously low prices. It's goal is to put art fodder in the hands of the masses, and it succeeds admirably. The clientele is actually eclectic, not just hipster-eccentric (although they find their way there too). I've watched people in SCRAP find objects that they immediately love— maybe they love them for their potential to be something else, or maybe they just love them for their living room. SCRAP appeals to the thrifty, the creative, and the curious: all of which are part of the spiritual core of Portland. When I buy things at SCRAP I linger over them and revisit them and treat them like the bits of treasure that they are, and I can do that without ever suffering from acid reflux on their behalf. 

Yesterday, SCRAP had an entire bin of 11" x 14" fiber and RC prints (in black and white as well as color) that a photographer had relinquished from his archives. Undoubtedly he'd gone digital. While many of the prints were product shots or early-90's big-hair studio lighting stock photography there were a few quieter gems: a muzzy black cat pawing across a linoleum wasteland, and a flock of birds creating a cloud of punctuation in the sky. Each cost a dollar. 

In a small tub next to them there was a small stack of images labeled MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHY. I picked out half a dozen and then happily plunked down my two quarters. It intrigues me that in a digital world some of the finest and cheapest images I've encountered in months are printed on paper using very expensive imaging equipment. Obviously, that is a bit of circumstantial irony, which carries a lot more bite in Portland than fabricated irony.

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
  

I just returned home from seeing Werner Herzog's new film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which reveals the oldest discovered cave paintings thus far (c. 32,000 years ago). While the overall structure of the documentary seemed less considered than I would expect of Herzog, it didn't matter all that much, as the reason for viewing it is not to so much as to speculate on definitions of humanity as it is to simply marvel at the vigor of the artwork. The Chauvet cave drawings are infused with a sensitivity to the natural world that is not just born out of observation, but out of a relationship that can best be described as kinship. You can feel the spirit within them, even across 32,000 years (and with a projector acting as intermediary). 

To see a 3D film that isn't interested in explosions or stomach-turning aerial pans was a welcome experience. In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the 3D honors the dynamic way the cave painters employed the natural contours of the wall to emphasize their compositions. I imagine it was also chosen because it is the most current means of photographic documentation and, consequently, captures the most information on film for posterity. 

Decadent Decline
acrylic, leafing, toner, and wax on panel10.5" square, 2011 — $450

Where does the allure of the chandelier originate from? Do we all fancy ourselves deserving of more elegance? Does sophistication come before, or after, the attainment of Venetian crystal? 

While visiting Italy a few years ago I was struck by the sheer ubiquitousness of chandeliers— here are a few snapshots to support my claim:

Of course, I'm willing to believe that chandeliers are a personal preoccupation stemming from an aesthetic inclination towards contrast. It might also have something to do with the subconscious comfort that comes with light conquering dark. The chandelier performs this with an opulent splintering of light that asserts not just the presence of a chemical reaction, but the very genius of man's imagination and handwork.