Fire and Gemstones: The Visceral Power of Debra Baxter's Mixed Media Sculptures

Debra is originally from Nebraska, and earned her MFA from Bard College. She lived in Seattle for 18 years, but made a big move to Santa Fe in August 2015. While she was in Washington State, she created a series of crystal brass knuckles and other wearable sculptures that went viral online and landed one of the works in the Smithsonian Collection (read about it in our previous blog post about Debra). For this special announcement, we spoke with Debra about coming to New Mexico, experimenting with new materials and other fascinating topics.

Check out the video and interview below, and make sure to browse Debra's new work on Artsy. 

form & concept: Have you always been creatively inclined?

Debra Baxter: I’ve pretty much been interested in art since birth, and naturally been drawn to it. I happen to be pretty good at it. Early on in life, it was mostly drawing. I just kind of stood out in that way, and I’ve always wanted to be an artist.

f&c: Did you have a lot of collections as a child?

DB: Throughout my life, I’ve had rock collections. My mom has a pretty good one, too. My late grandma was a science teacher, and her husband was an electrical engineer. They had a lot of samples from her science class, so I got some of those that say what mineral it is. I don’t know that I’ve collected found objects so much as just rocks.

f&c: Tell us about your move to New Mexico, and how it has influenced your work.

DB: I had been in Seattle 18 years, so it was a little painful because I love a lot of people there and have a really strong community there. But I was really ready for sun. I think Santa Fe is this crazy, magical place and probably one of the most beautiful places in the world. I just went to a conference, and when I told people I was from Santa Fe, they were like, “You get to live there?” It’s an honor to be able to live here. It’s kind of a miracle. Me and my husband worked so hard to figure out how he could get a job and we could do this.

A lot of people have asked me, ‘How has living in New Mexico changed your work?’ One of the main ways has been working in bronze and having access to a foundry. I also got a residency at Bullseye Glass there, so I’ve been able to access new materials and people. I think it might take time to figure out how it totally influences my work. It would be more obvious if I was a landscape painter, but it has definitely influenced my well-being. I feel like I have a really high quality of life. I don’t ever sit in traffic. That’s amazing, if you’ve lived in Seattle.

f&c: Give us a rundown of the materials you’re using in your sculptural work right now.

DB: Sculpturally, I work in a lot of materials. If I tried to reel it in to make a list, it would be alabaster, bronze, iron, crystals and minerals, wood, glass. They’re all pretty traditional sculptural materials. I’m drawn to permanency and things that will last, but I have this longing for tradition. I’m trying to take something traditional, and use it in a very strange, new way.

f&c: It’s quite an arsenal! You work with so many contrasting materials.

I really like combining materials that make no sense together. Like having crystal shoot out of alabaster. If I embed it well enough, people believe they actually grew out of the alabaster. I kind of love that I can actually make it almost look natural.

f&c: How do materials play into the concepts you’re exploring?

A lot of it is about materiality, and how much I love beautiful crystals and minerals and metal. Most recently, I’ve been exploring glass casting at Bullseye Glass, because I have a residency there. Content-wise, I’ve been interested in this idea of vulnerability. Partially in theory embracing vulnerability, but then the strength that can come from the bravery it takes to be vulnerable. You wouldn’t guess that by looking at this, but a lot of my pieces are purely formal. I like playing with beautiful objects and trying to solve a puzzle with how to put them together.

f&c: It’s quite an arsenal! You work with so many contrasting materials.

DB: I really like combining materials that make no sense together. Like having crystal shoot out of alabaster. If I embed it well enough, people believe they actually grew out of the alabaster. I kind of love that I can actually make it almost look natural.

f&c: How do materials play into the concepts you’re exploring?

DB: A lot of it is about materiality, and how much I love beautiful crystals and minerals and metal. Most recently, I’ve been exploring glass casting at Bullseye Glass, because I have a residency there. Content-wise, I’ve been interested in this idea of vulnerability. Partially in theory embracing vulnerability, but then the strength that can come from the bravery it takes to be vulnerable. You wouldn’t guess that by looking at this, but a lot of my pieces are purely formal. I like playing with beautiful objects and trying to solve a puzzle with how to put them together.

f&c: So you’re using the parameters of your materials as a kind of creative inspiration.

DB: It’s good for my brain. I really enjoy the puzzle. I get really excited when I have pieces where I need to figure out the solution to make it visually nice. I find it super fun to try to problem solve, by getting this back from the glass studio and saying, ‘Now what do I do with it? It’s gorgeous, what is it?’

f&c: How did you develop an interest in the concept of vulnerability and power?

DB: At Bard College, my thesis was partially written about this whole idea of vulnerability and how it could turn into power. Years later, there’s this writer and researcher, Brené Brown, who talks about how the only way to make leaps in your life is to be vulnerable, and how much we hate it.

When I’m in the middle of something horrible that makes me feel vulnerable, I’m usually not having a good time. But in order to make the jumps in life, you have to make yourself vulnerable. To fall in love with someone, you have to open your heart. That’s terrifying, because they could just destroy you. And I have been destroyed. But it’s such a big part of being a whole human. Brené Brown calls it “whole-hearted.”

I’m a really sappy, sentimental person. When I love, I love really hard. I think in some ways, it’s okay for that to come through in my work. It’s not cool to be sentimental in the conceptual art world, necessarily. But I just really believe that power can come through being vulnerable, even though when it’s happening, I despise it. I just think it’s really interesting that there’s research that backs that up. Brené Brown has done all these studies that back up how much you need to be vulnerable to grow.

I think I always have been drawn to delicate, breakable materials. Using fragile materials to talk about fragility makes sense. I had a glass balloon that was broken, and I built it all back together in this show I had in 2009. It was called False Hope.

I’ve always been interested in that, even though something like bronze is very solid. But that’s part of why I love glass and I’ve always loved glass, is that the material itself is vulnerable. It makes it tricky to work with, and tricky to show.

f&c: How do you feel about your recent explorations with glass casting?

DB: It’s kind of a discovery. There’s this mathematical equation for figuring out how much glass needs to be in the cast. I’m kind of playing with what happens if you don’t put enough in. It makes a cool edge if it’s just dripping. It drips in the kiln, and it might make a cool shape and might not.

I’m pretty into these accidents. I’m really more interested in not doing things the right way, which drives some people crazy about me. But I think with the experiments, sometimes you discover more than if you were trying to totally control the process.

f&c: Have you made connections with glass artists through your residency?

DB: I am starting to collaborate with a glass artist in Oakland, California. She sent me some of her duds that I’m trying to make something out of. We went back and forth, because I wanted her to blow glass on one of my alabaster sculptures, but then we both realized that it would probably crack and destroy the alabaster.

f&c: Tell us about your found object sculptures.

DB: Some of it falls into this Duchampian history of found objects in sculpture. Once he started using found objects, that changed everything. I started noticing that I’m drawn to similar objects and shapes. I’m very interested in natural materials. I did a project called 100 Days of Sculpture, where I made a sculpture every day for 100 days. Those are 90% found, because you can’t carve a piece of alabaster in a day, every day. What was interesting about that project was that I was always looking for objects. I’m just like that now.

f&c: How do you feel when the materials you’re working with suddenly fit together into a piece?

DB: Oh man, it’s so exciting. When I’m working with different pieces, and when they actually fit together, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, it worked!’ I love that process, and that’s part of what was fun about 100 Days of Sculpture, is to play with these objects every day. It’s all about experimentation. There isn’t a right way to do things, so you need to trust your intuition.