https://dougbaulos.com https://www.instagram.com/doug_baulos
Curated by Lisa Alembik
Swan Coach House Gallery http://www.swangallery.org
August 4-September 8, 2022
Opening 8/4 6-9 p.m.
Artist Talk 8/20 3 p.m.
CURATOR’S STATEMENT
Nature is primary. We are always becoming her, and she is us. This fluid relationship is something that those of us living in metropolitan areas don’t necessarily tend to in our everydays. As we continue to evolve into a global culture that resides more outside of the body and in the webisphere, many of us neglect our connection to the natural world. Sometimes, with blinders or virtual reality on, we cease recognizing that she is us, one big old globe whose atmosphere we all depend on for our well-being. As our earth begins to melt around our feet, we cannot overlook how important it is to remain grounded and, with vigilance, strengthen our bond with the planet. Sometimes artwork offers a prompt to take action, providing a way to engage the environment with both body and mind. Night’s Hand on Your Shoulder, a solo exhibition of works by Douglas Baulos, can be that compassionate push.
Douglas Baulos’ art and life Baulos’ profound connection to nature. Their handmade books and extraordinarily crafted installations are imbued with the breadth of their experience, from cultivating dye gardens and working the land, to spending time in ancient sites studying the skies. Baulos observes, seeking out what is hidden, making visible what only the quiet, patient eye may find. Baulos’ queer identity, with consideration for how they perceive the world from growing up in rural Illinois, and the influence of their travels with meaningful time spent in places like the western United States, Mexico, and Japan—these all flow through their artwork, and the artwork is them.
Baulos’ installations can be mindful spaces that shift the viewer from the world of hard, inflexible thinking into soft, open intuition. Gathered natural materials along with their observations of plant and animal life are woven into their art, with additions of lost-now-found objects that through context are imbued with complex meaning. Baulos transforms and transmogrifies their materials into altars, wall pieces, and transcendent spaces with their devotional creative energy. Their works are raw and vulnerable, still often holding a sense of joy—a looseness and fluidity of thought that allows the viewer to symbolically slip into the artwork.
A perennial storyteller, Baulos utilizes the language of nature and their lived history to develop their sincere narratives. Night’s Hand on Your Shoulder acts as a palimpsest, recording gradual transitions and shifts that overlap and disappear. The artist pays attention to signs that express the essence of time, observing as light morphs into shadow only to cycle back again. As time moves and nature flows so can our sense of self and our relationship to the immensity of nature. Baulos remind us of our corporeality and inextricable link to the earth, how we are connected to the shifts in seasons, the rotations of the planet, and the pull of the moon and stars.
–Lisa Alembik, curator
