The Self Absorbed Chronicle

Severed Serpent — Boise, ID

October 9, 2009

Click on image for larger view.

The difficulty with obeying the self-imposed obligation of preserving life is that it can get in the way of my living it.

I've slowly begun to organize all things visual over at Flickr with the hope of offering a more complete picture of my past year (or, to be honest, the past few years, as there are many projects that haven't ever made it off of my desktop until now). Allowing Flickr to sort my life into trifling categories seems far easier at this point than building a web site. Ambitious projects of that nature should only be undertaken if there's an audience for it, and by audience I mean something a little grander than my own ego.

Opening Tonight!

Source image for The Sentinel

My exhibition at Maude Kerns Art Center (MKAC) opens this evening at 6pm. While you probably hear this plenty from artists, I must reiterate: the reproductions of the work posted on this blog and at Flickr cannot even come close to revealing the subtleties of tone and texture in the work. Now, I'm not patting myself on the back here— I'm just trying to impart to you the importance of taking a trip to Eugene in the next month and a half.

Here are the particulars. . .

Jeffrey T. Baker: Mixed Media Photographs

Maude Kerns Art Center

1910 East 15th Ave.

Eugene OR 97403

Opening Reception: July 17th, 2009 from 6-8pm

Exhibition Dates: July 17th-August 28th, 2009

And Then My Presence Went Dark

Taken on Bainbridge Island,WA - Spring 2009

My website is gone. I couldn't bring myself to pay Apple for another year of hosting an aesthetically stunted site, yet I currently have nothing to replace it with either. All my attention at the moment is turned toward finishing up work for my exhibitions this summer and starting a second film. There is little chance I will be snuggling up with Dreamweaver anytime soon so, to prevent my complete disappearance from the electronic ether, I'm having my "tidal wave" of home page traffic forwarded to my Flickr account. I hope Flickr is up to the bandwidth requirements!

* * * * *

I've read many articles and books about the professional practices of artists, but none of them come close to offering as much good advice as an instructor I had in college— he said that you should never be spending more time on promotion and business than you were on creating. As soon as you'd violated that percentage you just had a job like anyone else. 

Over the past year I've invested a significant amount of time establishing a "web presence." It has been something of a boon to the five or six friends who would care about what I'm working on or thinking about even if I didn't spill it all out online, because it makes it easier for them to check in. But as for garnering an online community of supporters and compatriots; that demands a commitment of time and energy I simply cannot give. I admire those who can do it, and I wish them the best of luck Tweeting, Tubing, and Facebooking. For me, Flickr will act as a substitute until I can sit down and enjoy the creation of something beautiful for the web. Perhaps after two months of intensive work in the studio I might actually embrace a little time with Adobe as opposed to days of breathing in charcoal dust. Perhaps not. . .

The Thread of Truth

The week I went to Wordstock I also took my students to the World Forestry Center to see the Wolf to Woof exhibit. Being a responsible teacher, I previewed the entire exhibit the weekend prior to the field trip. Being a dutiful artist, I brought along my camera. Without a tripod I was only able to obtain a handful of photos, and of that handful only a very few were of any visual interest. They are currently available for scrutiny at Flickr.

I must confess that I love photographing museum displays— the subjects don't move, and with the right depth of field an entire dioramic fiction can become reality. Depending on my mood I might gravitate toward photographing those displays that can be easily mistaken for some scene outside the climate controlled exhibition hall, or I might feel more inclined toward those displays that fail utterly at their illusion. Those failures, once committed to the still image, become beguiling sources of wonder, as the viewer's inclination (despite the proliferation of Photoshop) continues to lean towards accepting photographic images as expressions of truth.

Now that I think about it, whether founded or not, museums also have the aura of truth wrapped about them. Our visits to them are meant to provide a curated experience endorsed by the diplomas and dissertations of experts. More than any other cultural institution we expect nothing short of complete veracity from a museum, for without the assurance of truth, they become nothing more than mausoleums we must pay to enter: tax-dollar vampires that preserve the past from the ravages of fire, time, and context.

I suppose the thread of implied truth could be construed as a tenuous connection between photography and museums, but it is the thread I unwind when I visit an exhibition, and it is the thread that I follow back out into the daylight when I start feeling oppressed by the hushed white walls and gleaming vitrines that fill my viewfinder.

The Week

GERALD FIGAL ON FLICKR

I ran across this image the other night on Flickr. It was part of a collection of pictures taken in the Edo-Tokyo museum by Gerald Figal and his images served as a catalyst for me to consider my own fascination with the conceptual implications of the miniature in contemporary art. More to come on this topic at a later date.

THE WORKS OF CLAUDIA ANGELMAIER IN APERTURE MAGAZINE

The lastest issue of Aperture features an article about the reproductive artworks of German photographer Claudia Angelmaier. Her meticulously composed collections of open books turned to the same reproduction of a famous art work succeed on a number of levels: they comment on the fallibility of mechanical reproduction, critique the experience of educating through second-hand experience, continue the post-modern preoccupation with originality born of mimicry, and manage to reference the sparse spirituality of Modernist abstraction. While the addition of the replicated artworks contributes a greater conceptual depth to her work, the photographic compositions that feature only obsessive compositions of white space and colored lines are no less beautiful for their minimalism.

THE FIRST UNVEILING OF SMALL WILD THINGS (SWT)

Last year's artistic collaboration was laid out in its entirety for me this week on the floor of the new Disjecta exhibition space. This sparked an intriguing dialogue about: the longevity of hierarchical relationships, color aversion, classifying artistic "style," breaking and obeying imperatives, the totalitarian grid, and the spiritual implications of reproduction. 

BIG SPACESHIP PROFILE ON LYNDA.COM

With two gaping holes left in my skull from the extraction of pesky wisdom teeth my energy level hit negative numbers and I sought interludes of distraction from the pain at lynda.com. This website is an absolutely fantastic software tutorial site that, for a monthly fee, walks you step-by-step through the intricacies of most major software programs available today. It has been indispensable to me as a graphic design student. Until yesterday, I had limited my viewing to movies related to programs that were stumping me, and not bothered to delve into the interviews and exposes of well regarded companies/individuals. 

Big Spaceship has been a company reverently referred to since my first day in PNCA's graphic design certificate program. The major player in the field of new media, or interactive media, or integrated design, or whatever moniker of the moment that connotes a mixture of web, film, graphic design, and information design. There's no doubting that they are very, very, good at what they do and, while it's light on specifics, the lynda.com expose of Big Spaceship does give a general sense of the culture and structure of the company.

Sadly, without a subscription you can only watch the three introductory videos, which are heavy on the fluff, but you can follow links to some of Big Spaceship's more notable projects and see what all the fuss is about.

California Flickrs

I've posted a few selections from my recent trip to California (along with some overly pensive comments) on flickr. Drop by and see the amazing Nikon D80 capture pictures in even the crummiest of light. 

Rockin

There are some things that humanity has historically been unable to resist. Gold. Silver. Puns. So I’ll just succumb and state that the Rice NW Museum of Rocks and Minerals is a real gem.*

On my second visit I was no less impressed with their vast collection of bewildering specimens from the clutches of the earth. Minerals that look as downy as cotton, as soft as ermine, as poisonously pigmented as American Apparel, fill case after glass-fronted display case in the untouched rambling 50’s ranch home of former logging baron Richard Rice.** A boulder sized thunder egg with an opal center greets visitors to the NW Mineral Gallery and one room in the main house cycles through different UV lights to demonstrate the hidden phosphorescence of some otherwise banal looking rocks. In the basement you’ll not only find the sweetest linoleum floor ever laid, but a fantastic collection of petrified wood (including petrified pine cones). I posted a few more pics on flickr should you care to explore why mineralogy has informed every hipster painter in the Pacific Northwest for the past five years.

If you have a weakness for small scale museums of oddities and obsessions then I highly recommend that you check out hiddenportland.com which has put together a charming little brochure of the finest rarely visited haunts of PDX.

*I’m not the only punny one. Check out this article where they manage to get in, “It will rock your mind and salt your appetite.” Why would they write that? And how could they follow it with the fact that the museum is only “a stone’s throw off Highway 26”? Funny how puns are only funny when you’re the one making them.

**Fact check please. I believe this to be true from some informative labels I read on my first visit but I was also monitoring twelve children during that visit and must admit the possibility that this may have weakened my recall.

Road Trip Proofs

Flickr and I have been strangers for too long. Therefore, I spent the morning culling a few images from my recent jaunt to the Bay Area and offering them up to the masses.

As I was traveling with adolescents I felt it safer to bring my hearty SLR with Lensbaby as opposed to my frail but versatile digital SLR. Such foresight was rewarded when my camera was mispacked atop a mound of duffel bags and fell out of the back of the van before we even left the school driveway. Twenty minutes of personal panic ensued when my shutter failed to work, but eventually I realized that the batteries had been jarred in their housing and needed to be reset.

One of the most amusing things about using only a Lensbaby on a trip is that you are constantly explaining to people why you can’t take a group picture in front of the fountain, forest, waterfall, wild animal, etc. Despite many profound insights into the history of lenses, the artist’s vision, and the ingredients of the sublime I’m inevitably given a frustrated “what’s the point” look that silences any further explanation. I’m not offended. People are welcome to want prosaic group photographs just as I’m welcome to photograph moss and lichen. In the end, who can say which will provide a finer recounting of experience?

Timberline

I’ve often been told that Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood is a masterpiece of craftsmanship. In fact, this was a common conversation thread throughout my years at Portland’s one and only craft college. It would begin with my telling a stranger I was getting a degree in craft.

There would be silence.

Then there could be a range of clunky questions seeking clarification, or there would be the question about Timberline.

“No.” I’d say, “I have not visited Timberline. Yet.”
And that would inadvertently derail that conversation.

After being an Oregonian for over a decade I finally wandered through Timberline Lodge. It contains many remarkable evidences of hand work; with the wrought iron hardware and massive hewn beams being the standouts. Over one doorway I spied a butterfly tenon larger than both my fists put together. Carved rams support chunky oak slab table tops and telephone pole beams are cut short and topped with friendly carved animals. A handmade cohesiveness provides harmony as well as quirky surprises on each floor of the lodge. In one side hallway I came across a simple wooden bench with protruding iron handles on one side and a single heavy metal wheel on the other so that the bench could be wheeled about if a new location was desired. I could not find another one. This singular bench made me wonder when we might again build buildings that would be erected to not just serve a function to the public but would also honor the ingenuity of a hand laborer.

As I see it, Timberline’s crafted beauty isn’t nearly as important as the sentiment that wrought it. In the bleakest of times for America a president saw fit to think outside of advisors, analysts, and political tradition to empower the impoverished. Among the hundreds of people working to fashion Timberline there were many who discovered previously hidden talents and were awarded not just a check, but with the feeling that their labor mattered. Simply stated, the New Deal valued its citizenry and unlocked their potential.

Critics of FDR’s plan proselytized the end of capitalism with the advent of the New Deal but I think of it as a very heart felt attempt to counteract an international crisis of economy and the subsequent feelings of worthlessness that it engendered.

Ultimately, government should not be just a gnarled web of mandates and bureaucracy; it should inspire and support the dreams of its populace. As a democratic population we should not allow our government to operate solely as a short-sided arm of disaster relief for the victims of its own inefficiency. FDR was not the primary culprit of a national economic downturn and many of his solutions to it live on today— can we have much faith that our current president will leave us with a similar legacy?

*Feeling it imprudent to take a camera on the slopes I turned to Flickr for an image. Fellow photographer Sherri Jackson graciously provided the picture above. It manages to capture not just the fantastic scale of the woodwork and masonry, but also reveals a bit of the impeccably considered lighting that exists throughout the lodge. Much thanks to Sherri.

Flickr?

Some ideas are really good. At the outset of the summer I had just such an idea. It came to me as I vacantly thumbed through one of my albums of 35mm photographs. You see, I have hundreds, possibly thousands of photos that I’ve taken over the course of the past decade. I would consider them opportunistic snapshots rather than art with a capital “A,” but many people who see them tend to scratch their heads and politely inquire as to where exactly I was visiting and with whom. There are rarely any people in the images. There are few vistas to establish the scenes. Most are textures or colors. Many reveal an aversion to focusing. In short, not art, and not accessible as documentation, they fall in some nebulous realm that will land them in flea markets and junk shops as curios from another time when people recorded images on chemically treated paper. But I digress; I was writing about a good idea.

I thought that there was no reason to let this bounty languish on a bookshelf for my enjoyment only- why not put a page on my website that would share the best of these images with the larger world. I could organize them into thematic groups, write short quips about the why and where of each image, and solicit viewer comments. Such a page would undoubtedly require plenty of work resizing images and I might have to consider finding a server that could host all that data without slowing upload times. The complications were many but it seemed like such a good idea, and I did anticipate having some free time this summer. . .

Then I remembered that I’d seen something like this before. It might have been a few years ago but I took the chance and searched for “photo sharing” on the web. Oh yeah, that was it: Flickr. In a flash my idea didn’t seem either unique or insurmountable. My website remains unchanged but after a mere hour of uploading the beginnings of my 35mm collection are on-line. Take a moment to visit by clicking here.

Next good idea: a site where you can upload and share short low-res video clips. Imagine the potential.