TCA Exhibits

Patrimonio Quemando – Living in Relationship with Wildfire

Jeff Baker & Joshua Berman 

October 3 – November 16

Free & open to the public

GALLERY HOURS

The Encore Gallery is open during events and by appointments.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Through two artists’ photographs, this joint exhibition shows the impact of wildfire upon the regional landscape, and a focused snapshot of place and community in their relationship with wildfire.

ARTIST STATEMENTS & BIOS

ABOUT THE ARTISTS 

Jeff Baker

Artist Statement

In 2021 during Covid, I began photographing burned landscapes in the Jemez caused by the 2011 Las Conchas fires which consumed 156,000 acres and at the time was one of the worst fires on record in New Mexico. Its devastation is still readily apparent and its effects long lasting.

Artistically, I was attracted to the very Pollock-esque graphics of blackened tree trunks in snow. At the time, it was a natural progression from my work with abstractions created by graffiti artists in New York. Over the years that work informed three exhibits at CONDUIT Gallery in Dallas and was shown in the exhibit, La Mejor Galeria es la Calle, at the TCA in 2019.

Working with the burnt landscape, I could not help but be concerned and alarmed by man’s impact, intentional or not, on Gaia’s health due to our neglect and misinformed ideas as to our stewardship of her care. That was the genesis of Gaia’s Rant, presented at CONDUIT in May 2022, an exhibition in progress as the Hermit’s Peak/ Calf Canyon fires broke out that summer; an unexpected foreshadowing of the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history.

The members of the TCA visual arts committee saw the synergy in my proposal and that of Joshua Berman, and suggested this wonderful collaboration helping cement the concept that both man and nature must be in harmony to thrive.

It is our heritage and responsibility.

Bio

Jeff Baker was born in Dallas, Texas in1952. As a small child in Paris in the mid 1950s, Baker went to the Louvre with his mother two to three times a week. The Winged Victory was literally his jungle gym, and he spent hours lying on the museum’s floors, looking up at ceilings full of Titians. HIs exposure to art was early, direct, and continuous.

He found himself in Gary Winogrand’s photography courses at UT Austin in the mid 1970s, listening to and being critiqued by Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Larry Fink and John Szarkowski among others, who came to lecture. The sense gained from them, that photography’s highest use was to document the human condition in all its varied forms, along with an innate sense of empathy, always informed his work as a photographer.

Honing his craft through 35 years of editorial and advertising assignments, he continually worked on personal projects, including large-format ethnographic studies in South America and Indonesia, landscapes informed by the relationship of man to his surroundings, and still-lifes of industrial-age tools that reference the personalities of their inventors.

As he continued to evolve his practice, later bodies of work looked at urban encryption as a means of communication within a neighborhood’s core population. An exhibition of that work, La Mejor Galeria es la Callé ,was shown at the Encore Gallery in 2019. Most recently, he has been abstracting those elements to concentrate on color, form and gesture through landscape projects in New Mexico and Costa Rica, where he divides his time. He is represented by Conduit Gallery in Dallas.

Joshua Berman

Artist Statement 

My personal relationship with the community has been one built slowly and organically over time. I’ve learned from the community how to connect in a variety of ways with the land and the elements, to understand their traditions of living in relationship with it.

My connection to the land is a deeply spiritual bond. The contemplative space of the Zen Buddhist sanctuary of Hokoji, and the landscape of El Salto Mountain towering overhead that its founder Kobun Chino Otogawa recognized as sacred, ties in deeply to this association.

Moving on the land itself has been an exercise in crossing thresholds, not only physically, but interpersonally and creatively. In the spirit of 18th century Japanese painter, Ike no Taiga, we have to move over the land in a form of pilgrimage to directly experience the landscapes we are conveying in our expression.

In sharing this visual story of stewardship, for me it’s a chapter in the larger framework of this expression of this place, its land, and my relationship with it. It’s a place that has become my adopted home through the years, a centering location that holds a clear sense of grounding, and a place with strong roots and wildness vital to preserve.

Bio

Joshua A. Berman (b. 1977) is a US-based visual storyteller, interdisciplinary artist, writer, outdoor educator, ski instructor, and kayak guide. His main focuses as a documentarian are oriented around nature, conservation, community, place, outdoor adventure, and contemplative life. Born and raised in western Pennsylvania, Berman first moved to Taos in 1998. Nowadays, he splits his time between O’ahu, Taos, and Pittsburgh.

His place-based photography and videography work focuses on conservation, adventure, and travel narratives around the globe, seeking a purposeful and interconnected relationship with the natural world and immersion in local community. He works alongside ecologists, land custodians, educators, and a variety of non-profits and NGOs.

Following an MFA in interdisciplinary arts, Berman studied in the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City under the guidance of renowned figures in contemporary photojournalism. His final project, Querencia, serves as the foundation of this current exhibition.

His work has been published by the Social Documentary Network, Photographer’s Without Border’s, and Santa Fe-based CENTER; he’s provided freelance work for the Taos News and Land Water People Time; and his work has been utilized by assorted regional and global non-profit and conservation organizations.

Berman recently served as an artist-in-residence at Sitka Center for Arts and Ecology on the central coast of Oregon, developing a project on habitat restoration with The Nature Conservancy, documenting the forest renewal of Opal Creek – site of the 2020 Beachie Creek Fire, and serving as a photography workshop instructor.

A board director for the Australia-based charitable organization, Make Ways Foundation, he recently completed production in Sierra Leone as lead producer, director, and director of photography on a documentary focused on the organization’s story. The film, entitled Running Salone, is currently in post-production.