Art can symbolize many things: beauty, creation, a new perspective or even a journey to places we have never been. To Katie Baker, a Georgia-born art student at UW, art is a fresh start and a new experience.
Her current situation is definitely a new experience, since her pieces are being featured in the THIS and THAT galleries in the Visual Arts Center for the very first time on Feb. 24.
Art was not a huge part of Baker’s life until she started dabbling in the art club during her high school years, doodling and painting whatever she felt like.
“I think I’ve always been interested in art, especially in high school. Whenever we had to choose an elective, I was like, ‘Oh, art class! That sounds like the most fun,’” Baker said.
Originally, she was not in any sort of art major either. Baker is now double majoring with a Bachelor of Arts and art education, as well as completing a minor in art history while doing honors.
“I was actually supposed to be a nurse, but I didn’t like that,” Baker said. “I just wasn’t passionate about it. It didn’t interest me.”
During her time at UW, the Wyoming landscape has inspired her, and that has melded in with some of her art pieces.
“Coming from Georgia, I was just mesmerized by the mountains, the Rocky Mountains,”Baker said. “We don’t have that in Georgia, and I wanted to capture that.”
UW, aside from helping Baker with her inspiration, has helped her continue to pursue her passion art in general.
“There’s some issues going on with funding of programs and everything, but compared to other schools like the University of Alabama, or in Las Vegas, they have the most materials to offer,” Baker said. “For example, like the ceramics room has a lot of equipment to offer, as wells as the printmaking room has ginormous rollers, and it’s nice of them to offer those to students.”
Baker captured the mountains in her own unique way with one of her gallery pieces. Along with flattening the design and making it a bit more abstract, she also wanted to make the color stand out.
“I’m more focused on color,” Baker said. “I like experimenting with color, and over-saturating colors, making different colors and combining different colors.”
Baker does things her own way, when it concerns her art. To her, there is not a wrong or right way to do art, unlike life.
“It’s an individual expression, and it can be like an extension of who you are,” Baker said. “In life, there’s either a right or a wrong answer, but in art, it’s not really that way.”
Media and styles are also very important to Baker. Baker said she loves the media of monotype (a type of printmaking where prints are made on non-absorbent medium, like wood), Intaglio (printmaking, but the ink is below the surface of plane, often metal), photography and oil painting.
One of the pieces being featured in the gallery is a monotype of mountains.
“The monotype, that was a lot of work. I had to print on this giant roller, this giant plexiglass roller,” Baker said. “Then making colors, I had to make my own colors, and that took forever.”
Being a first-timer in any gallery, Baker had very strong feelings about putting her artwork out there for all to see as it holds a personal meaning to her.
“They are monotype prints. With monotypes, you can wipe the glass clean and be like, ‘Ok, you don’t like it, just start over, do it this way,’” Baker said. “Just start over, I just like that aspect, because I started from Georgia and then I came here to start over, and that goes hand in hand. They are a symbol of my new beginning, of the new life I’m trying to create.”
