Carrie Ann Baade "Death and the Maiden"
I had the great privilege of getting to peer into Carrie Ann Baade's mind's eye:
Phantasmaphile: For starters, when did you begin painting, and more specifically, when did you you develop your signature "painted collage" style?
Carrie Ann Baade: I had a complete collapse in grad school. I could not figure out how to be like all my dead art heroes - Bosch, Fuseli, Moreau, Knopf - but be a part of Now. During this struggle, I had to start over. I had to go back to the beginning... in search of the armature, I rediscovered the artists’ first gallery, the refrigerator door. Upon the door were a sentimental photograph of my infant niece and the Christmas gift of magnets made from cut up discount art books. By moving some of these magnets over the photograph, the child’s eyes were covered with those from a Northern Renaissance portrait. A Boschian creature was placed on top of her head to serve as an ornamental hat. Lastly, a Durer Christ child and a Madonna’s hand scaled perfectly to that in the sentimental photo were placed on the arms in the photo. The completed the transformation was far more interesting than reality. After several attempts at turning the image into a painting, the foundation for understanding the difference between collage and pastiche occurred. Through research, I realized that the amalgam of images had precedence in the appropriation art of the 80’s which is described as the advent of the citation style in painting and other mediums. “Appropriation art” stresses the intentionality of the act of borrowing and the historical attitude of the borrower. By building upon this accepted practice, my paintings incorporate these purloined fragments and keep the physical identity of the different motifs preserved from the overall unity.
Ph: I'm sure you must answer this question a lot, but I would be remiss if didn't inquire about the ubiquity of eyes in your works. We've all heard the expression "The eyes are the window to the soul." What is it about eyes in particular that resonates so deeply with you?
CAB: My great grandmother was a doll maker. I grew up with many unusual dolls…my collection was pretty extensive. One day when I was about four, all their little starring eyes become too much and when next my mother entered my room, all of the dolls were turned around facing the wall. Eyes are intense, creepy in their ability to communicate so much of the internal world while simultaneously taking all that they observe. The treatment almost every character in my paintings receives is a new set of eyes. The eyes share a role in attribute, symbol, disguise, and the telling of a story through a story. The eye takes the outside world into the inner, and can also project the inner world onto the outer.
Ph: You seem to play around with ideas of layering, facade, and adornment. It's rather incredible, as portraiture tends to be entirely superficial, and yet you have invented this visual language which allows the viewer to mine deeper into the figure's psyche. Are you ever surprised by what emotions lie within your characters, or do you know beforehand who they really are and how they're really feeling?
CAB: Folks have asked me about the chicken and egg aspect of my work: Do you start with the idea then go make a collage or do you look at your collage stuff and then interpret the meaning? The answer is part tarot and part advent calendar. I have questions in mind when I am composing, I am searching for a solution to say...this feeling I have about the correlation between women and snakes and the moon. I collect images, I dive into my piles of cut outs that I have been archiving for the past 5 years. The composition of the collage can be immediate or go through 15 hours of revisions. It is like reading cards, the answer will come as I am searching and the answer is usually visually surprising. The most exciting part is when I am painting and the collage begins to fall apart and elements that were buried under layers start to resurface. The composition changes and new elements are opened up out of the underlying layers like an advent calendar.
Ph: There are a lot of allusions in your works, both historical and mythological (Napoleon, Venus, Kali, et al). Why have you chosen to depict the characters you do?
CAB: During the first few years of this series, I was interested in somewhat cautionary tales of figures of power. What makes someone powerful? How do they rule the world? What are the consequences of ruling? Do- be- play large means that there are casualties, or someone else will be defeated or hurt. The symbols and myths I am keeping alive provide a cautionary tale of my own.
Ph: I may be reading into things too much here, but many of your paintings appear to be self-portraits. Would you say that's accurate?
CAB: My nose and mouth make frequent appearances, which is strange because my eyes are said to be my best feature and I am remiss to make myself that vulnerable. The eyes are often Christ's from Our Man of Sorrow images or the Lady of Sorrow who is Mary. This opens up a whole new interpretation of images. I can say this: I was drawn to these images without knowing when or where they were from. Once I found out, then I looked specifically for the early primitive Netherlandish images for more and even traveled to
Ph: Can you walk me through your process, from the start of a work to its end?
CAB: Idea!, snip, cut, and collect - with lots of cello tape!, play and laugh at how funny images can be, revisions for 12 years, prepare copper, transfer image, paint in grisaille....totally tonal image with no chroma, paint in color, glaze and glaze, agonize, tell the painting it is the most beautiful thing that I have EVER created, frame, eject from studio to be hung in the gallery never to be seen again....next!
Ph: You've lived all over the country: New Orleans, Colorado, Chicago, Delaware, and now
CAB: Italy, Amsterdam,but a tourist in Egypt, Ireland, Turkey...if it's in Europe, I think I have been there. I am a museum geek. When on vacation, I don't go to the beach. I own almost nothing, but I have been to many of the major museums in the world, over and over. I do not know where I belong. I do not know where I should be. Up until recently, all the artists I loved were dead and I had no idea why I should be now. I am still searching for my audience, my collectors, and where I will be most comfortable as a struggling artist. I suppose I am best described as a “cultural nomad”. Architecture comforts me, bridges turn me on, museums get my blood going.
Ph: I live in Brooklyn, one of New York City's five boroughs. I keep hearing Philadelphia be referred to as "the sixth borough." What is the art scene like out there, and would you say there's a kinship with NYC?
CAB: I must admit, I need to go to more openings in Philadelphia. I know Philly is conservative, but the great and awesome Judith Schaechter creates here! I show at Rosenfeld Gallery where I am the only dark, deviant, surrealist in the fold, but I have a small and alert group of collectors. Lineage is the new "Juxtapoz" gallery and Jonathan Levine heralds it as one of the top 5 in the nation for this type of work.
Ph: How often do you paint, and how do you make time for it?
CAB: I am unemployed myself - so time but no money. For the last 13 months I have devoted myself 24/7 to my career painting. I don't recommend it, but it was the jump out of the plane with out a parachute: CAN YOU FLY? I paint on average 30 to 40 hours a week, but paper work sucks up about another 40.
Ph: Who are your favorite artists?
CAB: Judith Schaechter! Kris Kuksi, Liz McGrath, Julie Heffernan, Kara Walker, Dali, and Cathy de Monchaux.
Ph: What inspires you?
CAB: Jim Henson, J.M. Barry, Cervantes, Poe, Di Vinci, Elizabeth McGrath, Judith Schaechter, Mark Twain, Hemmingway, Virginia Wolf, Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth I, Jules Verne, and Madeline L'Engle. J.K. Rowling. Marcel du Champ, Dali, Picasso, Terry Gilliam, C.S. Lewis, Anias Nin, Emily Dickinson, Christ, and all rebelling angels.
Ph: Are you superstitious?
CAB: It feels better NOT to step on cracks.
Ph: What is your favorite a) taste b) sound c)sight d) smell and e) tactile sensation?
CAB: a) grapefruit b) jazz in resonating in the corridors of city buildings c) Gaudi's Cathedral, sunrise in cemetaries, and home after being away d) beniets from Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans and e) skin...living skin.
Ph: Do you have any plans to exhibit here in New York?
CAB: If all goes well I have work in 3 shows: KFMK Galleries, Strychnin, and Fuse Gallery – all this October!
Ph: Is there any news or work of yours you'd like me to share with Phantasmaphile's readers?
CAB: Metamorphoses is being released soon: a coffee table book of visionary artists put out by Jon Bienart of The Visionary Artist Forum of Australia....has Geiger and Alex Grey and loads of other greats. And everyone come to Strychnin - opening October 27th! The Dark Surrealists will be taking over NYC!
Ph: Generally speaking, where do your ideas come from?
CAB: My pain that I can not talk about, my sorrow that seems overflow, my rage that cannot be extinguished easily. Then this raw material is thrown into the machine of cut and paste. I have read a bit and taught art history so I have a fair knowledge of mythology, religious symbolism, stories of creation so I am trying to tell my own story through old stories and hybrid them into a new one. I am comforted by precedent and I feel that I am validated in the tragedies, calamities, and general human failure that plague existence. Also these are so very cliché yet, everyone's individual cliché is so authentic when it is happening to them. Experience is universal and individual. I hope my work is a record of my experience but simultaneously speaking to others about their individual human condition. There are so many powerful things that happen that we can not speak of politely.
amazing omg absolutely amzing
Posted by: blah | March 18, 2009 at 02:19 AM
Carriann,
Please continue with your excellent work. Thanks.
Paul D. Harvill
Posted by: Paul D. Harvill | November 18, 2010 at 08:03 PM