Tag Archives: Art

Courage at Twilight: Quotidian

Quotidian: a word embracing that collection of ordinary and mundane activities and events which one experiences on a routine or daily basis.

“Here you are!” Mom exclaimed as I entered the house after work and sat with her and Dad in the family room. “Tell me about your day?” I invited. Mom recounted how, the day being cold but sunny and bright, she and Dad had decided to run some errands. She drove her Subaru with Dad to pick up her newest needlepoint from the dry cleaner where it had been blocked, then to take it and three other newly-blocked needlepoints to the frame shop and selected frames—they’ll be done in about a month—then to the Burger King drive-through for Impossible burgers and fries and Diet Cokes, and while waiting for their food watching as police officers from three patrol cars placed a man in handcuffs and searched his car in the Burger King parking lot, then came home and fell into their recliners to watch NCIS and eat their Impossible burger meals. “We’re pooped!” she exclaimed. Mom then reminisced about Lynn Freeman from her University of Utah days who was a good friend and who had dwarfism and who was on the university swim team and who became a first-rate painter—I have admired his two paintings on their walls for five decades—Lynn gave her one painting as a wedding gift in 1962. I told them a bit about my work day, and the new book I’m “reading” during my commute: Leadership, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about the qualities that made Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson such pivotal leaders in American history, being connected in a line of admiration and mentorship back to George Washington. As stood to go to my rooms, Mom told me they had just ten minutes left of the last episode of the last year of 18 years of NCIS. She owns all 18 seasons on DVD.

Pictured above: Still Life, by Lynn Freeman.

Pictured below: Scene of Old Park City, by Lynn Freeman.

Courage at Twilight: Mom’s Needlepoint

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Ready for the day, Mom sits in her bedroom rocking chair working on her latest needlepoint, waiting for Dad to get up, then listening to him talk and talk when he does get up. His concerns about the family. His memories of his childhood, his ministry, his career as an international corporate lawyer. His worries about each member of the family. She listens and works the needle and listens. Her needle carries the yarn up through the square and diagonally down into the next square, a hundred thousand times. Mom’s completed needlepoints hang framed on many walls in the house, and include large florals, aboriginal geometric designs, fall leaves, rustic Brazilian skylines, and, my favorite, Noah’s ark and the world’s animals gathering two by two. Mom taught me to needlepoint when our family lived in Brazil—I was nine years old. My first (and only) needlepoint stitched a red cat on a yellow background. Two colors. Nothing like the complicated color patterns of a pair of Mallard ducks on a pond, or a sunset over Salvador, or women carrying pots on their heads. Mom needlepoints as she watches NCIS and PBS and Netflix, and as she waits for Dad to wake up from his night reading to tell her everything he has on his mind. Three needlepoints lay finished on the dining room table, and I drove Mom to a rundown wood-paneled dry cleaners to have the needlepoints stretched straight and blocked, ready for framing. “How do you think that young woman learned the skill of stretching and blocking needlepoint?” I asked Mom. She had no idea, but was glad to have found her. In two weeks, we’ll pick them up and deliver them to be framed. I hope she never stops doing needlepoint.

Enjoy these other needlepoints by my mother.

And three more finished, ready to be stretched, straightened, blocked, and framed.

Courage at Twilight: My Writing Desk

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The desk on which my computer sits and at which I sit to type these vignettes is not a desk at all. It is a repurposed kitchen table. In fact, it is the very first kitchen table my young wife and I bought for our very old new home. It was made of typical gold-colored pine slats with white-painted legs. That small table served our little family for years. When the little family became a big family, we needed a larger kitchen table. The old table was passed from room to room as a desk for various children. Erin stained the table top a darker brown and painted a green-and-maroon border, with blue flowers on vines in the center. I thought it was beautiful. During my six-month exile of separation, I took the table to my construction zone quarters as my writing desk. I had gathered notes and observations for nearly 20 years, determined to someday write my book. I had felt compelled for years to write it, but never made the time. But now a chiding thought nagged at me: You’ve always wanted to write your book. You will never have a better time to do it. Now is the time. So, I got to work. Nights and weekends I typed up my chicken scratch notes, many written as I walked on Rabbit Lane, elaborated my thoughts, printed and sorted and organized, reassembled and knitted together the stories in chapters, until the manuscript took its first breath as a real creature. I published the book in 2016, entitling it Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road. I felt better about this book than anything I had ever accomplished. I knew I had done it well and had made something beautiful and worthwhile. As we placed the old kitchen table turned writing desk into the moving truck last month to bring it to my new office at Mom’s and Dad’s house, a leg irreparably broke off. I was prepared to let the desk go, despite its sentimental value, but while I was at work Dad and a friend sank three long screws to repair the desk for my ongoing writing. I am hoping one day to prepare new manuscripts of which I can be equally proud. And I never see those blue flowers in the center of the table without remembering my daughter Erin and her beautiful artistic soul.

My special writing desk.

Writing the Rabbit Lane Memoir manuscript during 2013-2014.

Courage at Twilight: Wall Hangings

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The negotiated terms of my ouster included me rescuing my children’s artwork from the attic storage closet. I wanted these paintings displayed and my children honored. They had made oil, acrylic, and collage paintings on old plywood, cardboard, canvas board, and posterboard. Many pieces were very good. Determined, I took a framing class at the Tooele Army Depot morale, welfare, and recreation (MWR) facility. I learned to measure and cut the mats and the glass, assemble the frames, and apply the backing. I felt joyful and proud to hang these excellent art pieces on the walls of my apartment, which my father came to call my “art gallery.” They included scenes of Lisbon streetcars, Rio de Janeiro’s Cristo Redentor, the romantic streets of Paris, African villages, Korean dancers, and New York City street corners, plus a Panda Bear and a Great Blue Heron. The most venerable painting hanging on my apartment walls was an oil Dad painted in the 1950s of two children, a boy and a girl, walking hand-in-hand down a forest path. To move them safely, I wrapped these jewels in plastic and stacked them carefully in the Mom’s and Dad’s basement. After two weeks, I found myself ready to decorate my two rooms, too small to accommodate all the paintings I had framed. And I suddenly found that my connection to them was touched with old despair. For now, I will gently store them to await a time of greater healing and permanence, when I will take them out and again proudly display them. Now is not the time or the season. They are like so many priceless museum pieces wrapped in protecting plastic and stowed in crates, awaiting their grand retrospective. In the meantime, I have hung in my rooms several of Mom’s beautiful needlepoints, prints I bought on various trips, and the old oil of two children walking through the woods, holding hands.

She Gifted to Me a Treasure

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In 2012 my daughter Laura and I joined a multi-week pottery class. She turned and glazed many beautiful pieces (see photos below). While the wheel tested our (my) patience, taking the class was a wonderful daddy-daughter experience. As a younger child, Laura formed a clay blob of which she is not so proud. But I love it because she made it, and it has become one of my treasures–which is why I wanted to write this poem.

She Gifted to Me a Treasure

It is
a blob of fired clay,

fist-size, resembling
a woven straw beehive

in shape—a slanting thumb hole
welcomes pencils and pens,
barred pheasant feathers.

I am so fond of this blob because her hands formed
this blob, the masterpiece of a child creating,

and she made a present of it to me
because she doubted

her creation’s merit
as a thing, a tapering firm-based thing
with a cream sky dangling turquoise clouds and royal-blue stars:

a treasure to me
as is she.

Laura at the pottery wheel.

With expert instructor Jon Wexels.

Laura’s little masterpieces.

Wood Lamps

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My children and I worked for months (and in the case of the featured lamps, years) to be ready for the Tooele Arts Festival, a gathering of more dozens of artists and crafters from around the American west, held June 14-16. I purchased a booth space to sell the family wares. This post highlights several wood lamps I made with my sons John, Caleb, and Hyrum. Displaying our art for three days was an intense and rewarding social experience as we interacted with many hundreds of people, not pushing for sales, but just being personable. We sold three lamps, five rag rugs crocheted by my mother, eight wood bird-beak back scratchers carved by Caleb, and two dozen papier mache floral jars made with my daughter Hannah and my sons, along with 40 copies of my book Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road. Making these lamps with my sons has been a meaningful father-son experience for me, and hopefully gave them a sense of creativity, beauty, and business. You can see our other lamps on the Woodcraft page of this blog.

Burl wood in Sedona red, by Caleb.

Burl wood in Provincial brown, by Caleb. (Sold $49.)

Cottonwood with larval etchings, by Hyrum.

Root stump, by Hyrum.

Forked branch, by Hyrum.

Slender branch, by Hyrum.

“Anchor” by Hyrum. (Sold $49.)

“Little Guy” by John.

Hyrum’s first lamp from 2014.

“Old Timer” by Dad (me). This one is on my night stand. (Made in 1993,)

“Stone” by Hyrum.

“Ripples” by Hyrum. (Sold $29.)

Wood Lamp: Hope

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“Hope”

My friend and business associate Randy S. commissioned this lamp, affectionately named Hope, as a companion to our beautiful wood lamp Waves. Randy selected the wood for Hope from several photographs I sent him in October 2015, seen here from three different views.

Hyrum (15) and I worked slowly over the next year and a half to transform this rough piece of wood into the beautiful lamp featured above. The first step was, as always, to clean and smooth the wood. Next we drilled the small surface that would support the bulb socket, stained the wood with several coats of dark Provincial stain, and inserted the nipple pipe and socket.

Preparing the table-top base came next.

We mounted the lamp wood onto the base with wood glue and several three-inch screws, wired the lamp, varnished the base and lamp with gloss polyurethane, and caulked around the lamp base. We routed the base bottom to house the lamp chord.

The final step was to suspend the lamp upside down between two padded chairs and attach black felt to the bottom of the base.

Randy took the lamp to his home office to join Waves after nearly two years. He said it was worth the wait.

(Purchase Price: $500.)

Baker Brothers Lamps was founded to help my sons earn money for the 2013 and 2017 National Boy Scout Jamborees and to pay for their high school athletic activities and university studies. It has been so fun for me to work on this hobby with my sons, transforming rough wood into beautiful lamps.

Sphere of Absence

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Sphere of Absence by Erin Frances Baker

I exited a posh downtown law firm revolving door to accompany several high-priced litigators to lunch. As a municipal attorney, my city was their client, and I its representative. Hundreds of people walked every which way, moving single-mindedly toward their various destinations. Car horns honked. Crosswalk lights chirped. People talked animatedly. Buses dieseled by. Trolley car power cables sizzled. On the corner, in the middle of the commotion, sat a homeless woman, dirty, dressed in rags, her hair ratty. She sat and rocked and wailed inconsolably. No one paid her any mind. They merely arced around her from their many directions, creating a sphere of absence around her. I approached her, but not too close, to see her better. I ached for her, yet feared to enter that intimidating sphere. I marveled that she remained invisible to the bustling world around her. Still, though I saw her and felt for her, I too arced clear and moved on to my worldly business. Below is my poem describing the encounter, entitled “Sphere of Absence.”

My daughter, Erin Frances Baker, adapted my poem for her acrylic-on-board masterpiece, changing the character of my homeless woman to the lighter, but still isolated and nearly invisible, figure of a street performer. I hope you enjoy the poem and the painting.

SPHERE OF ABSENCE

She sat on the corner
of a bustling city street:
a surreal reminder
of an unfriendly reality;
a sad black-and-white cutout,
pasted, out of place,
into the noisy, colorful hustle
of illusory pursuits.
Mute faces ate and laughed
behind thick glass panes;
wingtips and heels stepped past
in all directions,
carving a polygonal sphere,
untouched, unvisited,
seen but ignored, unknown.
Unknowable.
Above the train-wheel grind and clatter,
the honking horns,
the crosswalk chirps,
the biting wind,
and the chatter, rose
a soft, wailing cry,
a muffled desperation,
a distracted pouring-out
of a fractured soul
into the lonely sphere of absence.

My book Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road, has recently been published in print and for Kindle. You can read about it here.

Wood Lamp: Timponogos

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Wood Lamp Timponogos by Owen Nelson Baker, Jr.

In the late 1950s, when my mother was my dad’s girlfriend, the two of them hiked to the peak of Mt. Timponogos in Utah. (Nelson and Lucille have been married for 54 years.) The 20-mile hike ends with optional slide down a steep, half-mile-long glacier. (I made the mistake of sliding down this glacier 60 years after they did. I slid so violently and fast, hitting dozens of rocks and holes on the way, that I thought I was going to die. My backside was black-and-blue for months!)

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Timponogos Glacier

Owen Nelson Baker, Jr., my father, returned from that trip with a large piece of twisted root-wood on his shoulder. He sandblasted it clean and smooth, drilled it, wired it, stained it, mounted it, and switched on the light of this gorgeous wood lamp, which I have named Timponogos. The heavy iron base he hack-sawed off of an antique bird cage. The root-wood still contains a sizable stone around which the roots grew.

The antique oak table on which Timponogos rests was made by my father’s grandfather, also Nelson Baker, who was a machinist and mine foreman for the Prince gold mind in Pioche, Nevada.

Notice the solid brace construction.

I have decorated the Timponogos table top with antique tools made and used long ago by great-grandpa Nelson.

My father’s beautiful lamp, which I have admired all of my life, is the inspiration behind Baker Brothers Lamps, an enterprise in which I join my three younger sons–John, Caleb, and Hyrum–to make beautiful wood lamps that we sell to fund our attendance at the National Boy Scout Jamboree, and for their future college expenses. (Sorry to disappoint, but Timponogos is not for sale.)

Dad and the Baker Brothers on 9/11/2011

John, Dad, and Caleb coming home tired from the 2013 National Jamboree

We continue to enjoy making beautiful wood lamps together, the pictures and stories of which I will continue to post on this blog and offer for sale. Here are links to some of the lamps we have made thus so far. We hope you like them.

Wood Lamp: Stone

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Stone by Hyrum Baker

Though made of wood, Hyrum and I thought Stone a good name for this little gem of a lamp, perfect for an end-table or night-stand. Stained a dark Jacobean, we thought its swirls reminiscent of cooling magma on some ancient volcanic seashore. Note the brass electrical tube wound tightly with jute twine.

This was one of our early wood lamp projects, before we embarked on more ambitious projects like Waves and Smoke, both masterpieces envisioned by Hyrum (then 12). Waves sold for $500.

Along with Reach, we traded Stone for in-kind services, provided by my journeyman friend Justin, to power my chicken-coop studio. We had set the price at $145.

Wood Lamp: Little Guy

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Little Guy by John Baker

Not all of Baker Brothers lamps are large (like Dolphin and Grace) or ornate (like Smoke and Waves). Some are small and simple, but still beautiful, like Little Guy, pictured above. Made from a fairly flat piece of drift wood, it resembles a small floating barc. A decorative stone placed just so balances the lamp perfectly on the wood’s natural three contact points (don’t worry–it won’t fall over without the stone, just tip slightly, as if riding a wave). The brass tube containing the wire and holding the shade is wrapped with jute twine for a rustic, seafaring look.

Little Guy can accompany you on your next maritime imagination adventure for $180, proceeds to fund the Bakers brothers’ attendance at the National Boy Scout Jamboree and their college funds. (An assortment of lamp shades is available.)

Wood Lamp: Grace

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Grace

The piece of driftwood that became the lamp Grace leaned against my shed for about a decade, a temporary decoration with which I might do something someday. It joined my other decorations, antiques, hanging from the shed by nails, though the wood lay on the ground, frequently obscured by weeds and grass.

This lamp posed the special challenge of mounting its lithe and twisting form to the base. At first I used a single nut and bolt, with washers at each end. But no matter how tight, the lamp still wobbled. Eventually, after staining and wiring, I added another bolt, and the lamp now stands firm like a ship’s mast to a ship. While drilling such a lamp for wire would normally be a challenge, only minimal drilling was required. The wire follows mostly natural cracks running down the back of the wood.

At 4.5 feet tall, a possible companion piece to Hyrum’s lamp Dolphin (4 feet even), we suggest a value for this lamp of $850.

Not just my sons have raised money for the National Boy Scout Jamboree. I join them in both the fund-raising and the scouting efforts. I attended in 2013 as an assistant scoutmaster, one of four men accompanying a troop of 36 Boy Scouts. I will attend again in 2017 in the same role. I am pictured here with my sons John and Caleb, in the Salt Lake City International airport, exhausted but happy after our three-week adventure.

I will post pictures and stories of additional wood lamps soon.

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