Meredith Baker is an upcoming fourth-year printmaking student at SCAD-Atlanta. She was recently among the few students who won the Alcott Scholarship, allowing her to take an all inclusive trip to New York City and visit almost all of the museums and galleries the city has to offer. Though NYC is not foreign to her experiences, she was born and raised in Atlanta, which had a lot to do with her choice of college education. She said her earliest memory of SCAD was wanting to go in middle school, “When my sister’s boyfriend was a student there. I wanted to be everything he was, and as I sort of found my place in high school, I knew I still wanted to attend the Atlanta campus and didn’t apply anywhere else. I threw all my eggs in one basket.”
Her creative process for any piece is simple, to find the balance. She considers both sides of each work, as the creator and the viewer. One can find her work in the perfect median between conceptual art and aesthetic art. With that in mind, she can also be labeled a Renaissance woman. She dips into numerous fields of the arts industry. Her interests lie also in fashion, writing, painting, and photography. In fact, she initially started out as a painting major and printmaking minor. But after attending her first printmaking club meeting, she felt more at home in that department, saying, “It might have been the chemical fumes, but that night I changed my major on SCADpro.”
Her most used mediums are etching and lithography, and each for different reasons. “I love the line quality that can be achieved with etching. Someone once told me that with etching you can create and edit your imagination and literally edit the outcome by hand. I like having the power to do that. With lithography, you get such a wide range of value, and it’s more workable with drawing. Plus there are times I crave drawing on litho stones. It is so empowering.”
Her two most coveted works in printmaking have been showcased in the fifth floor galleries, entitled 20973 and consumed. 20973 is a, “photogravure of a triptych. I shot these pictures a point in time in this man’s life that is particularly important. They are supposed to indirectly mimic mug shots. The numbers in the title are a line up number. The orientations of the photos are supposed to imply a face off. The photos interact and represent the struggle of true identity. This print is fairly large to be intimidating. Consumed is a portrait of an old man. It explores the idea of age as an object — in this case, hair. The hair has engulfed his face and made him unrecognizable to himself, but ultimately creating this comforting space that is visually pleasing. I tend to work with older male figures a lot. I also work a lot with hair. I love its significance to identity and security.”
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