Robin Baker Art

This is an ongoing body of work juxtaposing natural elements with cast objects in the form of tools inspired by human anatomy.  The anatomical elements are comprised of forms derived from the hip joint and surrounding bones. This part of the human anatomy represents the largest concentration of evolutionary adaptions allowing humans to walk upright. This ability put humans metaphorically above all other species on the planet, and so serves as the beginning of human dominance and exploitation of the natural world.

Artist Statement

My artistic focus for the past two years has been split into two related, but separate bodies of work. One body of work pertains to humanities relationship with nature. It is a continuation of the work I began as a graduate student and it continues to develop. The second is a collaborative effort with my wife and fellow sculptor Christyn Overstake.  In which we still focus on the natural world, but concentrate on the massive loss of biodiversity that our planet is currently experiencing.

My personal work was inspired by the irreverence of civilization with regard to the natural world.  Since the Industrial Revolution society has been obsessed with consumption and therefore production. Civilization’s desire for easily accessible and immediately attainable goods and services separates humanity from the natural world, and pushes it out of concern. Ignorance, blindness, apathy, and greed violently eradicate life, and leave an ever-widening wake of destruction, waste, and death. The infinite-growth paradigm of capitalism requires a perpetual acceleration of production and consumption.  This paradigm along with humanity’s blindness to it causes irrevocable damage to the planet that sustains us and threatens humanity itself. There is no way for humanity to pursue interminable progress and survive.

The collaborative efforts between my wife and I are based in the current despeciation occurring around the globe.  The numbers of critically endangered species on our planet are growing at a staggering rate.  Species that were never known to humanity are being eradicated by climate change, rising waters, and intentional habitat destruction.  Some of the species we are losing preform unknown and possibly essential functions of the natural world. To paraphrase the biologist E. O. Wilson; we need all the species on the planet, we have never lived in a world without them and we understand very little about how they fit into the ecosystem as a whole. 

To create this work Christyn and I are working with the Smithsonian and other academic and governmental entities, and the Biology department at The University of Notre Dame to collect and 3D scan skulls of critically endangered and extinct species. From these scans we can create replicas we can work with without the risk of damaging the original, often priceless, specimen. The objects born out of this work are collaborations between science, technology, and art.  They will serve as memento mori, shrines, or monuments to the threats each species faces and the efforts being undertaken to save them.

It is my hope that the work I create will engage a new audience in the issues we face, and our responsibility to act with the understanding that we are a part of the biosphere. It is fallacious to think our intellect or technology make humans as a species immune to the effects of an ailing planet. We rely on the biodiversity of the planet for our survival. As an artist, I want to help people understand the problems we face and what they can do to mitigate our effects.