Teresa Baker was raised throughout the Midwest in North Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, and Nebraska but considers the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota her home. Growing up, Baker watched her father, a superintendent of national parks, work to bring Native American thinking and teaching back to those lands. While Baker describes her work as not overtly or obviously from an indigenous artist, the materials, texture, shapes, and color relationships she uses are guided by her Mandan/Hidatsa culture and a slow, thoughtful process of making in the studio.
Through a mixed-media practice combining artificial and natural materials, Baker creates abstract landscapes exploring vast spaces of the Great Plains that appear empty at first glance but, upon closer inspection, are filled with movement and life. Baker’s work Abundant, commissioned by Sculpture Milwaukee, marks the artist’s first outdoor sculpture. Unlike Baker’s abstract landscape “paintings,” made with colored astroturf and yarn, this sculpture of a woven basket is directly inspired by the materials and handicrafts of her tribes, grounding the piece in a long cultural tradition that places meaning and beliefs around objects.
Teresa Baker was raised throughout the Midwest in North Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, and Nebraska but considers the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota her home. Growing up, Baker watched her father, a superintendent of national parks, work to bring Native American thinking and teaching back to those lands. While Baker describes her work as not overtly or obviously from an indigenous artist, the materials, texture, shapes, and color relationships she uses are guided by her Mandan/Hidatsa culture and a slow, thoughtful process of making in the studio.
Through a mixed-media practice combining artificial and natural materials, Baker creates abstract landscapes exploring vast spaces of the Great Plains that appear empty at first glance but, upon closer inspection, are filled with movement and life. Baker’s work Abundant, commissioned by Sculpture Milwaukee, marks the artist’s first outdoor sculpture. Unlike Baker’s abstract landscape “paintings,” made with colored astroturf and yarn, this sculpture of a woven basket is directly inspired by the materials and handicrafts of her tribes, grounding the piece in a long cultural tradition that places meaning and beliefs around objects.
Social Choreography Score
by Kim Miller
Social Choreography Score
by Kim Miller
What carries you? What do you carry?
You carry your body with you wherever you go.
How does your body carry you?
How do you carry your body?
Is that the same question?
Make a gesture of thanks towards your body. Carry yourself and also allow yourself to be carried.
Stand up straight in a relaxed position, arms by your side
Take a step forward while simultaneously raising both arms out to the side of your body
Your arms should be slightly bent like the curves of a basket
Bring your foot back to you original starting positions, this time however with your arms up at your sides
Slowly pick up the left foot and place it behind the right
Twist your body to the right
As you are twisted, let the arms twist and cross in front of the body. Thinking about the bronze that has been weaved that is in front of you
Shift your weight onto the left back foot
Bring the right leg up and over, unweaving it from the left leg, and place it next to the left. Back in your starting position
Continue weaving your arms, thinking about all the different patterns the bronze has been weaved in the sculpture in front of you.
Slowly move your arms to be above your head, continuing to find different patterns of weaving within this movement.
Let your body sway with the natural movement your arms are creating
Once you feel satisfied with the weaving you have explored with your arms, go completely still in the body besides the arms
Let the arms slowly and gracefully drop to your sides.
Look at them falling back to your sides. Observe them
Notice how your arms coming down is almost like the reveal of the finished product in which you weaved with your own arms
What carries you? What do you carry?
You carry your body with you wherever you go.
How does your body carry you?
How do you carry your body?
Is that the same question?
Make a gesture of thanks towards your body. Carry yourself and also allow yourself to be carried.
Stand up straight in a relaxed position, arms by your side
Take a step forward while simultaneously raising both arms out to the side of your body
Your arms should be slightly bent like the curves of a basket
Bring your foot back to you original starting positions, this time however with your arms up at your sides
Slowly pick up the left foot and place it behind the right
Twist your body to the right
As you are twisted, let the arms twist and cross in front of the body. Thinking about the bronze that has been weaved that is in front of you
Shift your weight onto the left back foot
Bring the right leg up and over, unweaving it from the left leg, and place it next to the left. Back in your starting position
Continue weaving your arms, thinking about all the different patterns the bronze has been weaved in the sculpture in front of you.
Slowly move your arms to be above your head, continuing to find different patterns of weaving within this movement.
Let your body sway with the natural movement your arms are creating
Once you feel satisfied with the weaving you have explored with your arms, go completely still in the body besides the arms
Let the arms slowly and gracefully drop to your sides.
Look at them falling back to your sides. Observe them
Notice how your arms coming down is almost like the reveal of the finished product in which you weaved with your own arms
