Check Out Noah Baen’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Noah Baen.

Hi Noah, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My lifelong passions are Art and Nature. It started early: it’s likely I was conceived at a camp in Pennsylvania Dutch country called “Nature Friends.” Since then it’s been a roundabout journey from growing up in a Philadelphia row house to my studio in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos in Crestone. I can trace my devotion to art to 5th grade when an artist/teacher lauded one of my paintings for its “composition”. I didn’t know what that meant but it sounded very cool and being praised for what had come from my unconscious–from my feelings and sense of structure– opened a drive to explore form and color and their connections to the inner life.

The intervening seven decades have been a dance with the yin and yang of nature and culture. I studied painting at Cooper Union in New York’s East Village, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brooklyn College. New York City and its vibrant art world became my home. Summers spent in nature–gardening, foraging, and painting landscapes on site sustained my soul. I became obsessed with conveying what it felt like to be standing on that piece of the Earth, in this body, feeling the ecstatic spaciousness and vital force of Nature.

I exhibited in many venues in and out of New York City; have worked in museums; taught at all levels from preschool to universities. In the early 80s, in the city, I made community gardens on vacant lots, even blocks away from Times Square; found community among Green Guerillas. At residencies in schools in New York and Pennsylvania, I led collaborative art-making projects that included school gardens, daycare center murals, and the ecological restoration of a coke mining site. For 20 years I led a family art and nature program at an exquisite public estate garden in the Bronx, a dream job since my role was to help children and parents love Nature and Art as I do.

When my wife Robin, also an artist, and I discovered Crestone with its community of spiritual seekers, nature lovers, and creative souls and its majestic natural setting, we were already looking to leave the city and the relentless competition of its art world for a simpler life closer to nature. We made the move in 2011.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Well, when we got to Crestone we felt isolated. We missed the creative dialog we had in our NYC artist community.

Largely through Robin’s initiative, we sought out other artists in Crestone and began monthly discussion sessions.

This evolved into the organization CrestoneArtists.com. Robin put together a website and in 2012 CrestoneArtists was asked to take over the Crestone tradition of an annual Open Studio Tour.

Then Robin died in 2015. Continuing after that was a challenge for me personally on many levels: emotionally, spiritually, and in practical ways as well. The art community she did so much to create was a major support. But I was looked at to replace her as the guiding force for CrestoneArtists. Replacing her was impossible. It was touch and go for a while but other artists, including Jandi Namba, my wife since August of last year, took up some of the burden and our group has thrived. We currently have 31 members and successfully presented our 10th annual Studio Tour this past October.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Speaking about my work brings up another area of challenge. I mentioned earlier how painting on site in Nature was central and soul-sustaining to my practice as an artist. In the 80’s it started to seem not enough; incomplete; like something essential in my inner experiences in the natural world as well as my awareness of ecological and social realities was being left out. Searching for a way to give form to these invisible relationships I painted political and ecological allegories. At that time I also turned to work directly with the land, creating patterns with found materials and nurturing volunteer plants, (aka weeds), in vacant lots, public spaces, and galleries. Making these “environmental installations” became my primary creative activity for two decades.

When I moved to Crestone in 2011 I continued making installations with nature. But I floundered, confronted with new natural and social surroundings. In the city, it was a powerful statement to frame a bit of overlooked nature. In Crestone, the community already honors the pristine beauty that is everywhere. What could I add? And I found the high desert offered me limited possibilities of what would grow where and how quickly. So it took some time and some trial and error to adjust; to tune in to the energy of my new home. I think I got there, at least in one piece that I’ve renewed each year. It’s called “In the Temple of Trees” and it’s centered on a contemplative path spiraling into a grove of ancient Pinons and Junipers. The spiral is how I saw the energy flowing in that space. Groups I’ve led through it seem to feel it too and enter into a connection with the magic of this place which is really my goal.

More recently, and to my surprise, I’ve returned to making drawings and paintings. Now a lifetime of drawing bodies and painting landscapes and being with nature is in the work. Sometimes I turn a figure into a landscape. Other times I do the reverse. Mostly I just start with random marks or pools of color and let unconscious, “channeled”, imagery emerge. People, places, and situations show up as I work; things that I could not have planned or imagined outside of the process. I don’t try to fix meaning. I leave that open so the viewer can participate in an act of creation. One series, which I call “Elementals at Play” is full of interacting figures, animals, and odd beings. To me, these are spirits of the landscape made visible: Playing the Earth and Creation into being in a continual dance.

Who else deserves credit for your story?
There are so many. Some I’ve mentioned: are my late wife Robin Ross and my wife of a year and a half, Jandi. They have each given me more than I can even begin to list. Then there’s William Wilson who opened my 5th-grade eyes to composition and all my other teachers in and out of school. I also have to thank my parents who tolerated my choice of a way of life that offered little chance of financial security or bounty. And my dear community of artists in New York and Crestone who have kept me centered on the joy, worthiness, and magic of a creative life.

CrestoneArtists is successful only because it’s been a group effort. After Robin’s death Beatris Burgoin, who has since returned to her native Baja, picked up a lot of the burden. Allison Wonderland, Pat Tullos, and Leigha Nicole helped take it from there. Our Open Studio Tour is only possible because of contributions from many local businesses, the Saguache County Tourism Council, and Saguache County Sustainable Environment and Economic Development, our fiscal sponsor.

Pricing:

• Small drawings $50-$250
• Larger works on paper $300-$950
• Paintings on canvas $450-$2000

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.crestoneartists.com/noah-baen.html
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/noah.baen 

Image Credits
Lori Nagel, Joshua Bright, and Jandi Namba