{"id":674,"date":"2009-06-10T20:43:14","date_gmt":"2009-06-11T03:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/06\/debra_baxter_-_early_work_the\/"},"modified":"2009-06-10T20:43:14","modified_gmt":"2009-06-11T03:43:14","slug":"debra_baxter_-_early_work_the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/06\/debra_baxter_-_early_work_the.html","title":{"rendered":"Debra Baxter – early work (the clouds)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Debra Baxter is not interested in her early work, which features clouds. She posts no images on her Web site<\/a>. Neither Howard House<\/a> nor Massimo Audiello<\/a>, the galleries that represent her, allude to it in any way.<\/p>\n

(Baxter’s current show here<\/a>. My review here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In the interests of getting me to leave her alone, however, she sent me a few images from her old world, created late in the 1990s into the mid-2000s. <\/p>\n

The first I saw were made of powder puffs sewn together. They loomed with lumpy grace out from the wall, obviously clouds and something else too, carriers of an antique feminine code – the gangster’s moll who powders her nose as men plot murder. <\/p>\n

\"debrabaxterclouds.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Powder puffs beautify their owners while being themselves quickly
\nstained and discarded, just as despoilers of the land, made rich, move
\non.<\/p>\n

Quickly following were another series of larger, more imposing
\npowder-puff clouds, caught in the act of transforming themselves into
\nsomething more substantial, maybe the white cliffs of Dover.
\nWhen they mutated again, they had taken on an ominous cast, spreading
\nalong a ceiling and down the seam of a wall like a fungus, a powdery
\ndecay.<\/p>\n

At the end, she was back to beauty in a big way. A single cloud hung
\nfrom floor to ceiling in the Platform Gallery<\/a>. Made of silk tissue
\npaper, it billowed with a dainty grace in spite of its bulk.<\/p>\n

\"debrabaxtercloud9.jpg\"<\/span> An exhibit
\nat Gallery 4Culture<\/a> titled, The Cloud That Fell to Earth<\/i>, was a tribute to Walter Tevis’ 1960s novel<\/a> about a man who fell to Earth, too alien, tender and talented to thrive here.<\/p>\n

The massive cloud made of cotton and felt clung to the ceiling as if it
\nfeared falling. Wrapping itself around the gallery’s industrial air
\nducts, its intensity was spineless. This pendulous portent, this baggy
\nmonster, wanted to retreat and had nowhere to go.<\/p>\n

In Spent<\/i>, her cloud is a loogie hawked out of the sky to land with a muffling
\nthud on a pine tree. In the photo that pretends to document sky’s
\ninsult to land, the pine tops a mountain, with white air surrounding
\nthe tree as a kind of reverberation.<\/p>\n

\"debrabaxterloogie.jpg\"<\/span>In a series of small photos collectively
\ntitled Portable Weather System<\/i>, a cloud tries its luck in a
\nvariety of settings and yet remains a stranger. It’s
\nstrange on a lonely road, strange at the ocean and strange indoors.
\nApparently, loony clouds can lose their place in the natural order.<\/p>\n

\"debrabaxterclouds4.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>
\nMe and My Cloud<\/i> portrays Baxter as a nurse taking her
\nailing air mass for a walk. <\/p>\n

\"debrabaxtercloud1.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Nursing is hard. No wonder she moved on.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debra Baxter is not interested in her early work, which features clouds. She posts no images on her Web site. Neither Howard House nor Massimo Audiello, the galleries that represent her, allude to it in any way. (Baxter’s current show here. My review here.) In the interests of getting me to leave her alone, however, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}