Ed Baker: Outsider Artist and Visual Poet

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Event: Saturday, December 10 from 5pm to 8pm

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On December 10, 2016, experience Ed Baker’s art as he displayed it in his home studio where he lived, wrote poetry, and created art. All items will be sold at best offer, with a portion of proceeds to benefit poetry programming for the City of Takoma Park. The City’s poetry initiatives, including Third Thursday Poetry, the public series in Takoma Park, have been around for quite some time. His family would like to help support this programming, in honor of his work.

Ed Baker (1941—2016), DC native, with nearly 50 creative years in Takoma Park, was a visual poet and outsider artist with a contemporary and distinctive, not-always-easy point-of-view. Baker’s paintings, drawings, assemblage, collage, and sculpture, created during the last several decades of his life, are currently on display as he’s always had them.

Though Baker disliked being pigeon-holed, his poetry and artwork has been likened to that of early contributors to Vispo. As Conrad DiDiodato explained in his Forward to Baker’s last major work, Stone Girl E-pic, “Vispo is shorthand for a computer-generated type of work that can be easily interchangeable with all of its other kinetic, aural and textual hybrids.” Baker’s contribution to Vispo began with the typewriter, transitioned to computer, and gradually incorporated non- computer generated art-making techniques and tools more and more. Shown in his evolution of work, what’s different is his “brush” mind.

The event is located at the late artist’s home studio at 8215 Flower Avenue, Takoma Park, MD. For more informtation, visit https://bit.ly/BakerArtShow.