Saige Baxter: August 2021
After Saige Baxter was awarded as Pittsburgh’s Emerging Artist of the Year in 2019, her focus transitioned from metal work to materiality. At Museum Lab, Baxter collaborated with sixth grade students as a teaching artist for the F.I.N.E. Artist Residency program where she fabricated a multi-media fiber installation, igniting in herself an infatuation with material play. Her current body of work, consisting of food sculptures and assemblage installations, unites her educational practice with her art practice as she pursues a Masters of Arts in Teaching at MICA in Baltimore. During the 2020-2021 COVID-19 Pandemic, Baxter became a full time virtual graduate student, who, like many artists, lost studio resources and access to makerspaces. This guided her to navigate away from welding permanent steel structures, to reusing temporary at-home materials such as food and everyday appliances. During her time at MICA, Baxter worked with freshman students to find creative solutions with everyday objects in an attempt to continue making art in a pandemic. Her passion for materiality and play initiated family research, leading her to relive childhood nostalgia through cooking, play and daily rituals. Baxter plans to continue dissecting family archives and playing as she prepares an interactive public installation for her MAT thesis exhibition at MICA in the Spring of 2022.
I am learning how to sit with the unknown. In a time of global uncertainty I sheltered in my house in an unfamiliar city as vulnerabilities and nostalgia seeped from childhood cracks and bubbled to the surface. As my life remained mostly idle, I gave myself a chance to marinate in memories of being in the kitchen with my grandmother, birthday parties with mom and chasing ice cream trucks. With nearly no tools I played with reused materials and attempted to liberate myself from expectations.
