Baxter Stults

"Birdwatcher" is a series of prints that illustrates the desire for connection, the yearning for something just out of reach. Individually, each print depicts my interactions with birds in various ways. Viewed as a whole, the prints tell a more comprehensive story of an individual's passionate yet misguided pursuit for connection. The narrative speaks of a person's deep, often obsessive quest to find a connection beyond themselves.

To Which We Belong examines humanity’s relationships with the natural world through the use of various media, including print, sound, animation, and living sculpture. Utilizing natural processes in my practice allows me to address human/nature relationships and ideas of time, change, and ephemerality.

Plant life becomes a primary tool in my work due to its inherent properties of life and death, change, and growth. The passage of time is measured through plants and in the change and transformation seen in their life cycles. The use of natural materials creates a body of work that is delicate – temporary and fleeting – requiring care to develop and maintain. Time causes all things and beings to change, to deteriorate, and to dematerialize, so decay also becomes a part of the process of creation.

I am inviting introspection in the viewer – to think about their own place in the world, their relationship with nature and our man-made environment, and to consider the impermanence of all things.

Our relationship with nature is often contradictory – we desire to be more connected with the natural world while simultaneously trying to keep it at a distance, distinguishing ourselves as something separate.

In a misguided attempt at experiencing the natural world, we often end up placing the natural world in pots and cages. Removed from their natural world, they become dependent on people to care for them. Our relationship becomes one of nurturing and control, caring and confinement, captor and captive.

Deface is a series of monotype prints that explore concepts of identity and anonymity. Each piece in the series features a figure whose face is either obscured or distorted to varying degrees. This creates an interplay between visibility and concealment, examining the significance of the face in our understanding of ourselves and others.

Stranger to Myself explores the unsettling experience of feeling disconnected both from others and from one’s own self. Each piece in the series is an exploration of alienation and introspection.