Works from the “Silk Spaces” series by Schenectady artist Arlene Baker will be on view in the Aesthetic Division exhibition at the College’s Humanities Gallery beginning Tuesday, April 1, with an opening reception set for Wednesday, April 2, 4-6 p.m.
The show, which runs through June 12, is free and open to the public.
In “Silk Spaces,” Baker explores horizons, color and veils with the application of opaque layers of gouache on paper that are then mounted on foam core board. These paintings are literally veiled; the surfaces are layered with diaphanous material, or “painted” with silk using a uniform 8” x 20” format.
Baker has called her veiled paintings “explorations of the aesthetics of the sublime on an intimate scale.”
Born and raised in New York City, Baker studied art at City College of New York, completing her bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota. There she studied with Peter Busa, a founding member of the abstract expressionist movement and good friend of Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner.
She earned master’s of art and master’s of fine art degrees from the University of Iowa, where she was influenced by the German experimental Plexiglas artist, Hans Breder.
Baker did post-graduate training in London. She has exhibited in London, Detroit, New York City and the Capital Region and regularly returns to London to work with the Barbican Arts Group, an artists’ collective. She began the first Silk Space painting in 1990 while working with the collective. Recent additions to the series have been shown as part of the Albany Center Gallery’s “Weaving Meaning” exhibit.
Baker is a former artist-in-residence at Union.
The Humanities gallery is on the second floor of the Humanities Building, opposite the entrance to Memorial Chapel. The gallery is open weekdays 2 to 5 p.m.