Casey Baden

BIO

Casey Baden was born and raised in Houston, TX. She completed her BFA at New York University, 2014 and her MFA at California Institute of the Arts, 2020. Baden has been awarded residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Vermont Studio Center, The Reef, AZ West, Textile Art Center, PADA Studios, at NYC Crit Club's Plum Lime Residency. Her works have been recently exhibited at the Spring/Break Art Fair New York and LA, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Hoarders Gallery, 00LA, Other Places Art Fair, Palos Verdes Art Center, and Palm Court Arts Complex, among others. Her work has been featured in publications including ArtForum (online), Hyperallergic, Voyage LA, and Materials and Applications. Presently, she is teaching fibers: special topics in art at Harvey Mudd college and Pomona college.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Casey Baden paints the feeling of being in a body. Her evocative tableaus feature figures that are not only subject to the shifting pressures and provocations of the physical world but also the pleasures and perils of the social and emotional realms. At times, the phantasmic bodies merge with lush, textural patterns or familiar domestic objects; elsewhere, their intertwining limbs dissolve, and their spectral forms collide. With restless variations of tonal contrasts, kaleidoscopic compositions, and rapturous sensory details, Baden visualizes the emotional undercurrents shaping empirical experience and the multifarious ways humans morph according to their environment. That Baden’s creative practice includes extensive textile experimentation is evidenced by the abundance of fabric and the assiduous attention paid to representing material texture. Rendering the striated topography of a fabric hammock, the concentric ripples that form atop a swimming pool, and the intricate stitching on a patchwork quilt, she elevates the tactile possibilities of the canvas and engages the viewer in a dynamic experience. The overwhelming accrual of sensation and texture enacts the inescapable deluge of stimulus and information inherent to contemporary life.

Interview with Casey Baden

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist?

I was always a creative kid, but our house was decidedly uncluttered and my mom didn’t want us to have a lot of toys or objects, I was mostly encouraged to go outside & play. Chalk and finger paint were ever-present.


One year for Christmas, my mom gave me a completely unfinished dollhouse – meaning it was just all wood, no paint or décor, so it became our project to paint it and select wallpaper for it, and create the whole world of it.

Then when I was 17, I went to a pre-college program at RISD, which is a 6-week summer camp for art kids that simulates a college experience. You stay in a dorm room with roommates, you select a major, you eat in a dining hall, and you spend the summer making art with a bunch of people you’d never met before. It was during RISD pre-college that I really started to feel like “Oh, I’m an artist and well what does that look like? How do I pursue that? Is pursuing a career in the arts a really crazy idea?” When I returned home at the end of the summer, I told my parents I was going to apply to regular colleges and art schools, and I’ve been on a winding-art-path ever since.

Can you tell us about some of your most memorable early influences?

I grew up in Houston, Texas and when I started driving, I became interested in a neighborhood called Montrose. That area is full of cute independent coffee shops and cafes, vintage stores, tattoo shops, concert venues and cool mural paintings. I always wanted to explore there, at which point, I “found” The Menil Collection which has a fantastic art collection that’s embedded in the neighborhood with a beautiful park and a bookstore nearby. Other art installations like the Cy Twombly gallery, a Dan Flavin installation, and the Rothko Chapel surround the collection. The Menil Collection always has a gallery of Surrealist work which really drew me in at that time.Pretty much every Saturday, I’d drive to Montrose, get a coffee, visit the galleries, and hang out in the park and draw or read or meet up with a friend.

I was also really lucky because the high school I went to had amazing art facilities. I became interested in dark room photography as a freshman. I have always been drawn to figurative imagery or work that focuses on the body and intimacy and interaction so artists like Nan Goldin, Ryan McGuinely, Sophie Calle, and Francesca Woodman were inspirations early on in that medium.

Lastly, I’ve always had an affinity for Matisse paintings, and I think that his sense of color and pattern have always been something I think about in my work. Although it’s a less pattern-centric piece, La Danse is a painting I feel sentimental about because of a trip I took to New York in Spring of 2010 where I saw the painting in person at MoMA. It was a really great trip and that MoMA visit has always stayed with me.

Where are you currently based and what brought you there? Are there any aspects of this specific location or community that have inspired your work?

I’m based in Los Angeles, and have been here for 6 years. Ending up here was a bit random… I came to LA after spending a year in Montana as a part of a relationship I was in. When we were deciding to leave Montana, I wanted to return to New York but he wanted to go to LA and he got a job first so that made the decision. The relationship ended shortly after that, but I was already here. 

Not long after, I started applying to graduate school programs and I cast a wide net, applying to 2 schools on the east coast, 2 mid-west schools, and 2 LA schools. I ended up staying in LA to go to CalArts. It took me a while to really appreciate LA. I think because I lived in New York first, I’m more in-tune with NY than LA, but there are a lot of things to love about LA. Especially since grad school, I’ve found that the LA art eco-system is fairly open and communal, or it’s easy enough to meet people and to develop a peer-group. There are so many artists here I’m grateful to call friends and to be in dialogue with. I also actually like driving, so I don’t mind that part of being a Los Angeleno.

I do think after 6 years, there’s a lot about LA that influences or inspires my work – pedagogical things from CalArts, material things because there’s a large group of artists working in textiles here that I’m in dialogue with, spatial or architectural things because there are so many incredible architects who’ve built really unique homes here, the sunlight, the flora and fauna – much of which I occasionally forage and use to create natural dye… I think there’s a real symbiosis between art and life where ever you live.

What is your studio space like? What makes your space unique to you?

For the last 3 years I’ve shared a large warehouse studio with various artists – between 3 and 6 of us at any given time. Our building is really unique because it used to house a trucking company and is in Commerce – a very industrial area in east LA right next to a cargo train depot. At the back side of our building there is a huge double-sided sliding door that completely opens up the space to the outdoors. As it happens, one of the sculptors I went to grad school with and with whom I have shared the space since the beginning, has turned his focus more to mechanics, so he actually uses that side of the shop space to work on cars. The studio is divided in 3 distinct spaces: the car and metal side of the shop, the wood shop, and then the front which has more individualized, smaller rooms that serve as the actual studios.

In this third space I have 2 rooms; one room with my loom where I focus on the textile work and one room I use primarily for painting. This space has functioned in so many ways over the last 3 years. We’ve had furniture makers, stone carvers, painters, all kinds of artists using the space. We’ve also hosted artist dinners, a monthly music series called DMV, and put on a small curated exhibition. While it has been a great and multi-functional space, I’m in the process of looking for a new studio. The building is really conducive to sculpture because of the large square footage, the outdoor space, and the ability to use power tools with no noise restrictions, but my work is primarily painting and textiles so it’s sometimes a struggle to keep things as clean and orderly as I’d like them. While I’ve loved my community there, I also hope to find something on my own in 2024 or to share with just 1 other person, something a little more contained, but hopefully still with outdoor space because I love the natural light and the dyeing usually gets done outside.

What is a typical day like? If you don't have a typical day, what is an ideal day? Do you work in large chunks of time, or throughout the day?

Like many artists, I definitely don’t have a typical day, but that’s mostly because I juggle a lot of different jobs outside of my studio practice. I’ve discovered that I really value having a flexible schedule and having my time be “my own” so to speak. So, in terms of work or income, I haven’t wanted to commit to a traditional, full-time job. Instead, I juggle gig work – building stretchers or pedestals for artists, doing sewing/tailoring jobs, and serving/bartending at a catering job. I also teach college courses in textiles.

Because I have so many irregularly scheduled jobs, if I want to go out of town without much notice, or if I receive a spot in a residency program, then I have some influence over when I’m scheduled to work. All of this means some days I’ll only have the morning to be in the studio, or just the afternoon. Ideally, there will come a time when I can have full days in the studio consistently because that’s my favorite place to be.

Since a full-day is ideal, I can describe what that might look like. First off, I’m not a super early riser, definitely more of a night owl, although my husband is the opposite, so we have kind of drifted more toward a middle ground over the years. I’m usually out of bed between 8 and 9. I’m not much for breakfast, just water and coffee to start the day, maybe a banana, and if I can get to the studio by 10/10:30 that’s great. Sometimes I’ll try to squeeze in a yoga or Pilates class before the studio. Once I’m there, it depends if I’m working on something textiles-forward, or if I’m working on paintings. A textiles project for me can tend to be fairly involved. Maybe I’m winding a new warp for the loom or I already have a weaving in progress, maybe I’m making new batches of natural dye and processing the fibers to receive the color, maybe I’m working on a rug tufting, or maybe I’m cutting up and sewing together various pieces of cloth. So much of fiber work requires a lot of repetition and I can really just fall into the trance of it working for hours without interruption.

If I’m in a painting period, then I’ll probably start with a bit of research and drawing. I’m always collecting images for reference either from books, from photos I take myself, from things I see on Instagram, etc. and then saving them into folders with labels like “figures”, “plants”, “shadow projection”, “windows”, “portals”, “patterns”, etc. So maybe I’ll dive into my image archive and start to put together ideas for a new composition, maybe I’ll be thinking about some kind of mythology and what the symbols are and I’ll take notes or draw really simple shapes that I maybe want to work into a painting. Maybe I’ll read old notes from studio visits I’ve done with artists to recall ideas we discussed. Maybe I’ll work in Photoshop on a digital collage or maybe I’ll just answer emails… When I’m focused on painting, there’s always something I’ll do first before I go to the canvas or start to mix paint. For whatever reason the beginning of the day can feel a little intimidating to me when painting and I can get anxious about making a wrong move so I need this transitional time to warm up or think or move my hand or refocus my ideas. That said, once I get into painting, I’m locked in and can focus really diligently.

Eventually, I’ll stop for lunch, either bringing leftovers, or grabbing tacos or a salad from somewhere near the studio. If I go out for lunch, I might stop by a gallery or two on my way back if there’s a show I want to see nearby. I’m usually back at the studio by 2:30 and at this point I’ll probably have about an hour of admin/computer time before jumping back into the actual making. I’ll usually work ‘til about 7 or 8 and then either go home to cook dinner with my husband whose studio is in our garage at home, or I love an impromptu evening socializing activity. A lot of people in LA don’t go for a surprise invitation or a last minute “let’s grab a drink” text, but that’s something so ingrained in me from my time in New York. I feel like people were much more willing to get together spontaneously in Brooklyn than they are here, but I still try. I prefer a last-minute encounter to the pressure of long-made advanced plans hanging over you, but that’s just me.

What gets you in a creative groove or flow? Is there anything that interrupts your creative energy?

Flow: iced coffee, good music, good preparation – meaning I’ve already selected a bunch of images I want to use or work from, I have a color relationship I’m keen to work on in several pieces, I’m stocked up on all my materials, and I really know what I’m trying to convey in a group of works contextually or conceptually so there’s less room for doubting and questioning myself as I’m working – also a really good studio visit, and a residency full of uninterrupted studio time.

Interruption: stress and anxiety… either the stress of juggling a lot of different jobs and having to cut studio time short, shifting my attention several times from task to task, needing to drive across town and/or keeping a really tight/strict schedule, or the more general stresses like worrying I’ve forgotten something, financial stuff, or that the work isn’t “good enough”. I also worry when I don’t have the next thing lined up. I’m definitely a worrier and it’s to my own detriment.

How do you maintain momentum in your practice? Is there anything that hinders or helps your focus?

I’m naturally very focused and goal oriented, or I simply just like to be making things. I start to get antsy if it’s been a few weeks and I haven’t at least begun making something new or had my hands in my materials. Sometimes I actually think I might benefit from being able to take more of a step back or more of a breather to really evaluate, research, and suss-out new meanings and motivations in my work. I’m realizing how differently I approach my fibers work to my painting work as I respond to these questions.

With weaving especially, it’s very sedentary and repetitive, so on loom days I usually put on a tv show on my laptop with a lot of episodes that I can just keep rolling through as I work, or I’ll do a deep dive into a podcast that has several episodes I want to listen to, or I’ll start a new audiobook. Alternatively with painting, I don’t want the same kind of language or story-heavy narrative to distract me from my own thoughts, so instead I usually listen to music while I paint. I try to make a new playlist every few months that keeps pace with my changing moods or tastes as I work. I love to have external markers for momentum, like shows coming up or deadlines for things I want to apply to, of course, because that gives me a rigid structure to adhere to, but even without those things sometimes, I tend to just carry on making the work.

What medium/media are you working in right now? What draws you to this particular material or method?

For most of 2023 I’ve been focused on more straightforward paintings (as opposed to mixed-media works or jumping between materials as I had done the previous year) in preparation for a solo show currently on view in LA at La Loma Projects. These paintings are all on unprimed, raw canvas which I really love because it keeps canvas in the realm of fiber rather than morphing into something more plastic or artificial in surface. I use a combination of acrylic paint, sometimes a bit of watercolor, and oil pastels along with various painting mediums so parts of the painting will feel really absorbent and liquid, while other parts have more texture from a pumice medium or just paint buildup, whereas other parts feel more drawn than painted with the pastels. The raw canvas really soaks up a lot of paint so it can be slower and often require more paint per inch than a gessoed surface.

Now that the show is finished and out of the studio, I have been craving some time to work in textiles, so I’ve been dyeing silk, cotton, muslin, canvas, and linen with madder root, oak galls, logwood, cochineal and henna. After the cloth is dyed, I make abstract colored pencil drawings sort of dealing with the colors and the textures of the fibers coming up with shape combinations. Then I go back to the fabric and start to cut it apart into both curvy, organic shapes and more rigid, geometric pieces and start to sew everything together also including some raw canvas and burlap in the composition. The one I’ve recently started will get stretched on a large panel, 46 x 96 inches, which I’m actually thinking will be a diptych, so two pieces stacked to create a 92 x 96 inch piece, probably my largest to date. Once the fabric part is reconstructed and stretched, then I plan to paint onto that, using the underlying color, texture, shape, and surface of the fabric as part of the painting.

Can you walk us through your overall process in making your current work? Does drawing play a role in your process?

Yes, drawing definitely plays a role in my process in various ways. Additionally, there is a lot of creation of materials – liked the dyed fiber - that take time and effort to “create” but are not themselves the final work, just material to be used in something else. So, this means my overall process includes collecting and culling through images, reading and looking and writing a lot, drawing and/or making digital collages in Photoshop, sometimes incorporating a projector, sourcing fiber, dye matter, and thread, creating dyed materials, sewing surfaces, weaving cloth, building stretchers, occasionally building armatures, mixing paint, painting on both canvas and wood, sometimes cutting apart again, embroidering, weaving again, and so on and so forth. Then again, sometimes I just make a straightforward painting or drawing, so it’s not always as complicated.

What is exciting about your process currently?

What is most exciting at this moment is the potential or possibility that comes between bodies of work. Since I just installed a show about a month ago, I’m in the in between space – not fully having let go of that work, but also dreaming up the next thing, trying to take what I’ve learned from this series of paintings with me into whatever comes next. I feel a little directionless as I haven’t fully committed to a new idea, but also trying to embrace the fluidity and the excitement that can come from the unknown.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work over time? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

I’ve always been interested in the figure, both the somatic experience of having a body and experiencing it as the container for self, but also the body in relationship to other bodies and to the external, natural or built environment. I like to deal with or think about intimacy, proximity, tactility, the dichotomy of self and other, sensuality and eroticism, but also just connection and comfort without the sexual component. I like to think about how to paint a feeling or an emotion or a relationship and how to convey those subtleties of the social realm and how we morph based on our environments or perceptions. There’s also a domestic element to my work, thinking about our homes and the materials found there and how we can express ourselves in that space and who we might live with or invite into the personal realm. Patterns too are a place of investigation and expression in my work which maybe comes from the grid as an underlying structure to fabric but also the vast and complex variations that can be created within or out of this seeming rigidity. My interest in patterns also connects to an interest in symbols or archetypes or mythologies, these stories that feel relatable throughout history, where we can go to find meaning or answers in a sort of metaphorical space, that are somehow kind of the same but also unique with each iteration.

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors?

In the past, I collaborated with Minga Opazo on a project we called Textile Resource LA through which we pursued a residency, curated two exhibitions, taught a couple of workshops and gave artists talks. This was a really fruitful collaboration but was sort of contained within the year of a shared residency we did together. This year I’ve also been teaching textiles courses at Pomona College and Harvey Mudd College which definitely feels like an extension of or another container for my practice. Lastly, my husband, Nicholas Kennedy, is also a painter and we talk about collaborating all the time on some sort of project, but we haven’t really hammered out the details of what that might look like, so maybe we’ll figure that out one day soon.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music — that are important to you?

There are a few exhibitions that I saw this year that have really stood out, or stayed with me:

Mary Herbert’s paintings in “Soft Logic” at Moskowitz Bayse

the collaborative project between Anne Libby and Anna Rosen called Libby Rosen that was on view at Night Gallery in the spring with an exhibition called Rib Erosion

Charlotte Edey and Azadeh Elmizadeh, “The Inexpressible is Contained” at Sea View

Woven Histories at LACMA

As far as literature goes, I tend to read more non-fiction than fiction. Some books that have really impacted me lately have been:

I’m Very Into You: Correspondence 1995-1996 by Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark

Yield: The Journal of an Artist by Anne Truitt

Greek Myths: A New Retelling by Charlotte Higgins

Some favorite albums recently have been:

Auto-Pain – Deeper

Miss Universe – Nilüfer Yanya

Your Hero is Not Dead - Westerman

Can you elaborate on a recent work of yours, and tell us the story of how it came to be?

Fluid Feelings / Pity the Fool is one of the paintings in my current show, Soft Moves, at La Loma Projects. It’s a part of the series of paintings I’ve been focusing on in 2023. This one definitely emerged from my image archive and piecing together different things to create an imagined space. The female figure in the center of the painting was based on an image of a woman I saw in a magazine. She was originally sitting on the back ledge of a sofa which I shifted to the ledge of the pool. The checkered pool came from an Architectural Digest photoshoot that I had saved because I love the way the checkered tiles interacted with the water and the refracting light from the sun. The more dense, abstract-ish, floral background came from some really close up, macro photos of flower petals floating in water, but I just adjusted the scale in order to fill the space of the painting. The plants on the left side of the image came from the collection of potted plants I have a home. My husband and I are kind of obsessed with plants and have probably close to 100 at this point. Some of my paintings are developed from something more “real”, but this one was really a created, non-real sort of dreamy space.

Have you overcome any memorable roadblocks or struggles in your practice that you could share with us?

I finished grad school in 2020, a couple months after the beginning of the pandemic. It was difficult because the momentum I had hoped to have coming out of school was completely thwarted. You couldn’t meet curators or have studio visits or hope for the possibility of exhibitions much at that time which felt really frustrating. Also, during the pandemic, job prospects were fairly limited, so in response to this, I actually started a business myself. It was a small fabrication company focused on building things for artists and galleries. Running a business is extremely challenging, but I learned so much from the experience and am really grateful for it. We ultimately decided to move on to other projects after just 2 years, but it definitely got us through the worst of the pandemic, it gave me a plethora of new skills and experiences, and overall was an extremely valuable time. I definitely have the entrepreneurial spirit and hope to do something in that realm again eventually, maybe an artist-run space or something.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? Is there a recent exhibition that stood out to you?

Painters: Amy Bessone, Patricia Iglesias Peco, Margaret R. Thompson, Hannah Hur, Anthony Cudahy, Elizabeth Glaessner, Katja Seib, Tomo Cambell, Danielle Orchard, Molly Zuckerman Hartung, Amy Sillman, Laura Owens, Joshua Hagler, Tschabalala Self, Talia Levitt, Robin F. Williams, Adam Alessi, Michelle Blade, Maja Ruznic, Celeste Rapone, Lauren Luloff, Ken Gun Min

Textile Artists: Pauline Shaw, Lila De Magalhaes, Diedrick Brackens, Christy Matson, Julia Gutman, Tau Lewis, Em Kettner, Sarah Zapata, Maria Guzman Capron, Emma Safir, Padma Rajendran, Bea Bonafini

I could go on and on… there are so many artists that I admire!

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

“Rising tides raise all boats”, “Comparison is the thief of joy”, and “Focus on the work and you can’t go wrong.” All of these snippets sort of tie in together. It can be hard, especially with social media, to see the successes or careers of other artists or just the actual artworks being made with so much thought and talent and to not feel envious or self-critical, or to just encounter your own insecurity. But more and more I remind myself that the comparison does nothing and is so subjective, it’s just a distraction with no real merit. Also, I am so grateful to know so many great artists. I try to see other artists’ opportunities as not only good for them, but also as good for me and our whole peer group or community. We all do a lot to support one another and to show up. There’s so much conversation and word of mouth that I really believe proximity becomes a good indicator of new opportunities on the horizon.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?

I’m in the midst of the really big textile collage surface that I mentioned before that will eventually become a diptych surface to be painted on. In 2024, I am confirming the scheduling of two residencies: one in Pennsylvania where I plan to do some textiles research and visit some old fiber mills, and a second one in Mexico City, likely in the summer, which will result in an exhibition with the hosting gallery. Otherwise, things are fairly open and I look forward to whatever opportunities arise.

To find out more about Casey Baden check out her website and Instagram.