various negative scanned from southeast asia, mexico, etc

Ocean Springs Victorian Album Workshop -with beads and transfers etc.

“Art condenses and fixes this human time of rushing decades that is otherwise

Evasive and untouchable” – Czeslaw  Milosz

mantra

new studio shots

go here for story about my department, colleagues, and pictures etc. - lots of good text

://www.uab.edu/uabmagazine/2013/march/artists?start=5

collabs

Don't have time to post right now - I'm sitting with a friend that is passing.  Pinky just sent me a photo of a book we collaborated on for her sweet granddaughter megan.  Here is the photo she sent.

artist statement

✖ Artist Statement by Doug Baulos

Although I work with the feelings of loss, mortality, and the power and delicate nature of memory, my work is a reflection of my attempt to live my life in fragile exultation. The process of piecing together an image is a meditative exercise for me. I begin with fragmented images, ideas and materials, and layer seemingly dissimilar elements that trigger associations in complex combinations.  The contrast between fragmenting an idea and layering ideas is interesting to me.  Most of my recent work reflects a multitude of interests including grief and mortality, nesting and mending, meditation, vision, medical illustration and procedure, and spirituality. My work is composed of myriad layers of media, ideas and associations. The process of piecing together an image is a meditative exercise for me having as much to do with duration as physical texture or of following the thread of mindfulness. I merge the abstraction of narrative with the physicality of objects. I see it as a function of time, like the idea of chanting. I want to personify intangible experiences and feelings and make them tangible for my audience.  The figurative nature of some of my works stresses the idea of transformation and recovery over victimization. There is an intimacy with the subject becoming object, with the reverence for the passed life and the confrontation of the doggedly present body. I’m interested in forms and images that accompany the body and in the traces the body leaves: a bed, a nest, a webs, decay and shadows.   While drawing and layering found materials, seemingly dissimilar elements begin to trigger associations with other images and ideas. It's my hope that the viewer connects these images by drawing on their own interests and associations. Retired objects and found papers are redeployed as agent of memory that can evoke and reflect on the history of private lives – worn and battered, certain found object evoke sympathy and empathy.  Like a dog without a tail we notice an object or book’s history and pluck as survivor.  This idea of fragmentation as well as things left marked or scarred is reinforced through patina of found materials, diversity of subjective textures and disjointed formal structures. The aim of my work has always been to arouse in my audience (as well as myself) an experience of empathy with my subject matter more than sympathy. I try to be very aware of how events are traced and mapped both physically and emotionally - both violent and non-violent (passive). Recently I’m exploring the idea of simultaneously linking the outside surface with inner experience, seeking to create books and sculptures that present themselves as humble objects that open into vast, imaginative space for the reader. By using discarded dictionaries (nests of birds) and transforming them into book sculptures I hope to explode the text into an embodied narrative, a sculpture of our inner life.

creative maker

from the book - "The Book: Art & Object - Philip Smith