March 2023 AIR: Mara Baker
We are excited to share the work of our March Artist in Residence Mara Baker
Q & A
Q: Hey Mara, we’re so excited to have you at Latitude! Can you tell us how this project of sourcing found materials to create bright public installations started? How did it feel to create this work for the first time?
I lived in Chicago for 14 years, in different neighborhoods, just recently moving to Oak Park. I’m very much inspired by the city. My work for the last 10 years has been heavily influenced by collecting things from my daily walks and thinking visually about the streetscape and environment I live in.
The idea of displaying the Chameleon Blind in storefronts throughout the city evolved; I didn’t start with a grand vision. I installed the first iteration of the work in the Corner Project Window space on Milwaukee Avenue in Avondale, from February to April of 2018. My focus was on creating a work that directly responded to the other storefront windows on the block - that visual cacophony of vibrant LED lights, graphic signs and idiosyncratic, highly personal displays.
The installation was designed to offer luminous respite from Chicago’s long, dark, grey winter. Each night, at the exact moment of dusk, the installation would light up, creating a vivid and colorful experience for people as they passed by. I was blown away by the positive response I received during the installation. It made me excited to focus more on public and community-driven work, finding new ways to display my work in non-traditional spaces that the public interact with in their daily lives without having to go to a dedicated gallery space.
Q: Found objects, natural objects, color, and light seem to impact a lot of your work. How do you bridge those cohesively in your installations?
The honest answer is that it is an intuitive process. I find the most inspiration in found materials and the observed environment and that is reflected in the work I make. This could be a broken light grid from an office complex, a tattered piece of construction tape turned into a binding wire to hold layers together; or wildflowers collected in empty lots throughout the city which become vibrant natural dyes. The common conceptual thread is transience and regeneration.
I experience materials as color and color as material. My work vacillates between extremes, taking cues from the high-contrast colors of the urban environment, to more recently coaxing color from natural dyes made from weeds, wildflowers, bark, and insects found on the edges of highway entrances, street parkways, overgrown vacant lots, and my own garden. These, too, are the colors of the city, created by the interaction of light, water, and soil, another form of material residue.
Q: How does being a teacher affect your artistic practice? Did your work or practice change when you became a teacher?
Yes, definitely, and it continues to change. I have always taken the approach to teaching that if I am excited about what I am teaching my students will learn to find excitement in their own work and ideas. As a result, I am constantly developing new courses and curriculum based on what is happening in my studio. I also find that I am always learning from my students and that influences my work. My focus on community and making art accessible in both my work and teaching is a direct result of working for 15 years in the community college environment. The diversity of students and backgrounds inspire me and I honestly believe had made me a better human and artist.
Q: I read that you started this type of work back in 2018. This sounds like a project you've been working on for years in different forms and iterations, how much has changed about the purpose this work serves, and what has held true throughout it all?
The origin of this body of work actually goes back much further starting with multi-dimensional paintings in gallery spaces as early as 2013. I still am reusing elements from these early installations in current work. In 2018, I decided to take a leap into the unknown and start locating the work in non-traditional spaces and empty storefronts. I saw the brown-papered, empty storefronts with “for rent” signs in the windows as full of potential to be transformed with light and color. I also was inspired by the idea that the project could disrupt the stigma of vacant spaces while buildings are in transition and improve walkability by providing light. From 2018-2022, this was my main focus, finding spaces and partnerships with local businesses and chambers of commerce throughout the city including Uptown, West Town, Bronzeville, Humboldt Park, Old Irving Park and Six Corners. The next phase of the project is evolving towards less transient spaces to more public facing but permanent installations in the future. What has held true through it all is a focus on site as integral to the work. Or another way to put it is, the site as material. I also continue to deconstruct, reconstruct and find new lives for my materials expanding the work into new mediums.
Q: Repetition and grids show up a lot in your work and people say it's easier to create in a confined grid. Do you find that to be true? How will natural inks fit into the grids and geometric shapes you highlight in your work?
The grid for me is formal, structural and environmental. At its most basic level a weaving is constructed from a grid. The wooden frames used in Chameleon Blind hold a warp or the vertical part of a weaving, which is basically one side of a grid and provides a structure for me to hold all of my chaotic bits of detritus. Chicago is also based on a grid, although there is lots of weird diagonals across the city, which I love. Windows are forms of grids or squares and are often the site for my work. Many of my found materials are grids including the plastic sleeves they put around wine bottles and the net bags used for produce. If you look closely, you can see these material grids all throughout the work. So to say the grid is a common thread is entirely accurate. However, I am not sure if I would necessarily agree that it is easier to create in a confined grid. I simultaneously work with and break up the grid. Although I love the precision of the gridded drawings of Agnes Martin, my work is much more gestural using the grid as a starting point to a deconstructed end. Natural inks behave in weird ways, often making precision impossible. I like that, as it allows for the material to play a big role in the outcome of the work. At Latitude I am excited to try to hack a printer to work with natural inks as part of my residency. My expectation is that it will do unpredictable things.
MARA BAKER
Mara Baker (she/her) is a Chicago-based artist and educator. Baker received an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally including Chicago, New York, Santa Fe, Minneapolis, Budapest and Toronto. Some notable exhibition venues include Bert Green Fine Art (Chicago IL) Riverside Art Center Sculpture Garden (Riverside, IL), Currents New Media Festival (Santa Fe NM), The Soap Factory (Minneapolis MN), The Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (Grand Rapids, MI), and The Luminary Arts Center (Saint Louis, MO). She has been the recipient of artist’s grants and residencies from Spudnik Press, (Chicago IL), Hambidge Art Center (Rabun Gap, GA), The Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Illinois Arts Council Agency, Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Chicago Artists Coalition (Chicago, IL). She has received three SSA Public art grants from Chambers of Commerce across the city of Chicago for the Chameleon Blind Window Project. Baker is Professor and chair of the Visiting Artist Series at the College of Dupage, a nationally recognized community college serving the greater Chicago area.