Today we’d like to introduce you to Carrie Ann Baade.
Hi Carrie, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
Embarking on an art career often feels like shouting into the abyss. In 2006, that was exactly my situation—desperately seeking visibility, validation, anything, but in 2006, you could start your career with six good paintings on a website and a computer online. I would write people online for hours and share my work… look at me… look at me… look at me. Then, unexpectedly, one day, the abyss looked back. Amidst the noise of cyberspace, someone offered me guidance, promising to illuminate the murky path of my art career—for a fee of $300.
At the time, $300 was everything I had, a choice between sustenance or a leap of faith. I had 300.00, which could buy me food, pay rent, or do this deal. I sweated through my shirt, trying to decide if I would leap or get evicted from my apartment in Philadelphia. I chose the latter, akin to Jack trading his cow for magic beans. To my astonishment, the stranger, an “art consultant,” was a former gallery director with connections to LA. She curated my debut in a group show in NYC, paving the way for introductions to galleries coast to coast. Her counsel led to countless exhibitions and invaluable contacts—a serendipitous encounter that transformed her into my very own faery godmother. I was connected to “Peggy Guggenheim of Lowbrow” Billy Shire of La Luz de Jesus Gallery through her introduction. This began my career, and it continues to this day. Last year, La Luz de Jesus Press published my first comprehensive monograph on my surreal self-portrait paintings, showcasing approximately 100 paintings from 2002 to the present. https://laluzdejesus.com/gallery/carrie-ann-baade-scissors-tears-hardcover/
While my story may seem like a fairytale, I caution against following suit. It was a rare stroke of luck, a whimsical twist of fate—a tale of magic beans that sprouted.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In 2010, I was in a low moment. It was the recession, and all my students’ parents had lost their homes, and they could not afford supplies. I thought that I was in the wrong profession and maybe I was wrong for becoming an art professor…that I had made my students complicit in living a life of poverty and dreams. This guaranteed paycheck and a life that would assure that I could always be self-sufficient and make art, but was I doing something gravely wrong? Was this like in the 70s when it was said that we didn’t need any more folk singers? What purpose did art and artists serve? Every lesson I had learned in my life had taught me that art was a nearly impossible vocation. From first grade, when my art teacher, Avis Cook, showed us how to draw two mountains with a winding road, and then digressed into the life of Van Gogh, who sold no paintings during his lifetime and then she told us that he cut off his ear…it was clear there were some occupational hazards to my chosen path. At the School of the Art Institute in the ’90s, I was repeatedly told that painting was dead, but I was also told art was dead. I asked an art professor what came after post-modernism, and he responded, “There will be no more art movements.” Feeling like I was born too late to arrive at the party, I knuckled down and decided to be an artist anyway. I had proven to myself that this was why I was born and what I was meant to do, but how reprehensible was it to tell my students that they should do the same thing? That fall, I went into one of my semesterly artist’s talks where I spoke to the new students; I started my lecture with a once viral essay I wrote that I always started with, “Do Not Become an Artist,” when from the darkness, the second row broke into audible sobs. I tried to calm her, but she said that morning she had been on the phone with her mother, and she was going to have to drop the major because it was not a good idea for her to pursue this as a career. I asked her to wait and hear me out, but it was a little late; I had triggered her trauma and her fear. I was no longer inspirational; I was the student hero who encouraged them into a life of scarcity and painful sacrifice. I had read many biographies of artists, and I was painfully aware that they tended to end in abject poverty, unable to pay for their own tombstones. Was there another way to look at this so I could be a professor? I was in many lows in my life… but I also realized that at age 35, I had accomplished everything that I thought it would take my whole life to accomplish. By my definition, I was a successful artist who three galleries represented, and I was regularly selling my work. Still, it paid nothing compared to my regular paycheck at my professor job. However, the one thing I did not do yet was go to Bali. On this Hindu Island in the archipelago of Indonesia, there is a city called Ubud, which is said to be a city of painters. This place had been calling to me for over a decade. On my birthday that year, I started a new list of life goals that began with 1. Go to Bali. 2. Meet the greatest artists of this time. (For more on intentions and manifesting, I recommend Wayne Dyer’s Power of Intention). Immediately, I saw online that Alex and Allyson Grey were hosting a workshop in Bali. I signed up. I didn’t have the money to do this. I just signed up and hoped that the money would show up. The following week, I sold five paintings and won a 5K grant for my art, which gave me 9K… which was enough money to pay for the workshop, the airfare, and travel for a month, and my mortgage. This was a nothing short of miraculous.
In March, I had an art opening in Philadelphia, and I was more popular than ever; hundreds came to the show in the tiny gallery. Many notable Philadelphia artists attended and indeed thrilled me with their support. The work wasn’t selling…It was the recession. That night, we drove up to New York City and slept in a hotel in Times Square. I awoke that morning to terrible news. March 7th, the same day as my opening, the Grey’s were driving down a freeway in Vermont when their car was run off the road by a large SUV. They drove off the road into a granite embankment when their tire blew out. They had injuries. Alex burst his 5th lumbar vertebrae, and if the injury had happened any hirer, he would have been rendered a paraplegic. Allyson broke her ankle and compressed her L1 vertebrae. I covered myself with the hotel sheet and howled. There was no way we were going to Bali. It would all be canceled.
This was not about a vacation or merely an experience. I was trying to change the direction of my life, and I had hitched all my hopes to them that I could get out of hell (understand there is a lot I am not telling you here). Perhaps it was a hell of my own making, but I needed a light, and this was the plan.
I had pressing questions for Alex, fueled by reading his book, “Mission of Art.” Although I found it challenging to read, I resorted to a form of bibliomancy, flipping through its pages and absorbing whatever wisdom I found. I was confident he would provide insights into my dilemmas: How could I navigate being a professor? How could I maintain my spirituality within the confines of academia? How could I redefine the perception of art as futile and artists as impoverished to something indispensable? Amidst the prevailing notion of art’s insignificance during the economic downturn, why did I persist in teaching and nurturing aspiring artists?
I knew there would be people at this workshop who just wanted the photo op with the Greys to post on social media, but I just wanted to ask my questions. I had gotten my job, but I didn’t think I could do it without guidance and direction from someone who I respected.
And now it would not happen. After everything that had happened in my life, I felt hopeless.
By May, Alex and Allyson were on the path to recovery, wearing full-torso removable braces, yet our trip to Bali remained on schedule, with our departure just over two months away. Alex and Allyson are known for their work with COSM, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, a revered space in NYC where Alex’s visionary art takes center stage. This art explores the “x-rays” of multiple dimensions of reality, weaving together physical, spiritual, and biological perspectives. Amidst plans to close the NYC location and establish a larger estate for a museum/temple and gathering place, their influence was palpable. Alex’s renowned work with Tool had made him a household name. Although initially unimpressed when encountering his art in 1996, the sense of community and their writings made the Greys prominent figures my students often discussed. It was through them that I embarked on a journey to engage with the greatest artists of our time…
…
It was time; the workshop was almost over, and I had to ask Alex my questions: and the question that I needed ask, how can I be a professor? Was it not evil to try to teach these students to create art when we were in one of the worst economic crises? I worked so hard to break into the university system only to wonder if it was evil.
Alex encouraged me to divide my teaching into practice, meditation, and service to help guide and ground the students. He believed I could be a spiritual person and thrive in the university; more so, he thought what I was doing was important. I wanted nothing more than to stay in Bali, a place of beauty and magic, and never return. I believed I had found heaven. I didn’t want to return to FSU or Tallahassee; I wanted to stay in this end game, this perfect navel of the world. I wanted to graduate to heaven on earth and not go home.
Alex gave me a list of books ranging from Tibetan Buddhism to Rudolf Steiner, but overwhelmingly, he said the answers I sought were in the artist Joseph Beuys. This was interesting…Beuys was that guy who had poured honey over his face and covered it with gold while explaining pictures to a dead hare and later wrapped himself in a blanket and, holding a shepherd’s staff, communed with a coyote in the gallery. He was part shaman and part madman. When I returned home, I bought all these books and combed them for information.
So, over the next year, I read the books. The one that changed my life was Joseph Beuys Energy Plan for the Western Man. I circled all the parts that made sense and then edited it over and over again until it became a sermon, I perform every chance I get when I speak or perform as an Art Nun. (It’s below). It helped me to change what I thought I understood about Art and separate it from its potential. Art is a level of intent. It is harmony with materials, motor skills, thoughts, and emotions that transforms objects, space, time, us, and others. There is limitless untapped potential within Art.
Artists are sensitive, perceptive synthesizers of experience. Artists may hold the key to transforming a sick world into a healthy one. We may mourn our loss of resources or rising population, but we have the potential for human consciousness. To paraphrase Victor Hugo, what god manifested in nature is what humans create through Art. Our possibility for a future where humans are aligned with the planet and making for the betterment of all is through this shift of conscious awareness, and I believe art can deliver that.
This is not merely painting or sculpture but applying the human gifts of creative innovation and problem-solving.
Maybe you area skeptic? Do you think art is bogus?
Close your eyes. Imagine the world without dance, architecture, music, paintings, cuisine, or literature. Art has been saving us every day. It has been saving us from the worst versions of ourselves.
Every human being is capable of this personal revolution. If we are not creators, then we are consumers and destructive. We make war and garbage. I saw clearly that studying art was one of the noblest things any of us could do. Thinking of all of our ancestors and their toil to survive and support their families, to live and create as an artist, is the bloom on that vine. To be a professor is to teach each student that they are creative problem solvers and how to align their intent and voice through materials. If one wants to be materially prosperous, then this is also an entrepreneurial pursuit. Art is a multi-billion-dollar industry, so there is work to do if that is what you want. But art is not a pure thing…it’s art plus everything. Anything you bring art to raises its intent and the potential of its design. Can we create so that we are in harmony with nature? Can we create a more beautiful design that compliments and transforms the possibilities of human potential and existence? I am not teaching students for a career or a market alone…I am teaching them skills for a future that only they can imagine.
Funding the arts at every phase of education is step one for this revolution. Art, in some form, should be required for all to be healthy and harmonious members of society. When culture thrives, our society is healthy and meaningful.
So, I have been friends with the Grey’s, eaten at their table… but the conversation is why I am there. They have grown and made mistakes, but they are earnestly some of the people trying to positively influence this world through supporting the mission of art. I think it’s important to have been in this lifetime with them. Also, I now realize my intention was a little off. I should have written that “I want to be among the greatest artists of this lifetime”…not just meet them. Our journey here all about making better intentions and doing the work to make life meaningful and magic.
This below was only possible through Alex Grey. This is my manifesto made from thoughts by Joseph Beuys that I have arranged. This is my reason to exist in this lifetime:
Today’s sermon is from the prophet Joseph Beuys:
I want to declare why I feel that it’s now necessary to establish a new kind of art that is able to show the problems of the whole society and of every living being.
Here, my idea is to declare that Art is the ‘only’ possibility for evolution, the only possibility to change the situation in the world. But then you have to expand the idea of art to include creativity. And if you do that, it follows logically that every living being is an Artist – an Artist in the sense that they can develop their capacity… And therefore, in short, I’m saying all work that’s done has to have the quality of art.
Creativity is not limited to people practicing one of the traditional forms of Art, and even in the case of Artists, creativity is not confined to the exercise of their Art. Humans are only truly alive when they realize they are creative, artistic beings…Even peeling a potato can be a work of art if it is a conscious act.
Each one of us has a creative potential that is hidden by competitiveness and success-aggression. The task of the School of Creation is to recognize, explore, and develop this potential. Whether it be a painting, sculpture, symphony, or novel, the task involves not merely talent, intuition, powers of imagination, and application but also the ability to shape material that could be expanded to other socially relevant spheres.
Art is a genuinely human medium for revolutionary change, completing the transformation from a sick world to a healthy one. Only Art is capable of doing this! This means that every human being is an Artist or must be considered such since humankind’s creativity is the real capital of a society.
Art is the only political power, the only revolutionary power, the only evolutionary power, and the only power that can free humankind from all repression.
When you see our culture related to freedom, you will understand that a thriving culture implies our individual and collective freedom!
EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST!
EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST!
EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST!
(can I get a hallelujah?)
Amen.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Throughout my twenty-five-year painting journey, I’ve delved into themes surrounding undervalued subjects and enigmatic identities. My paintings serve as storytellers, featuring intricate, realist compositions intertwined with mythological symbolism. Being rooted in the Deep South, a place I didn’t so much choose as it chose me, adds a distinctive dimension to my work. While I was born and currently teach here, my artistic presence has extended to Los Angeles over the past nineteen years.
Living in Florida, while enriching in many ways, can sometimes pose challenges for someone like me who strives for a broad, holistic understanding of the world through travel and literature. However, despite these challenges, I remain committed to my craft and constantly seek new avenues for creative expression.
My latest endeavor involves developing a project slated for exhibition in January 2025 at LeMieux Galleries. This project aims to shed light on the untold stories of women from diverse ethnic backgrounds in colonial Louisiana. Through a series of collage-based paintings, multimedia installations, and a graphic novel, I endeavor to unveil overlooked historical narratives and establish connections between the past and present. Grounded in extensive genealogical research and immersive engagement with New Orleans’ archives and communities, this ambitious project represents my ongoing effort to challenge my sense of place and explore the complexities of my location.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you, and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Helping students brings me joy because it allows me to play a significant role in shaping their futures. In my current position overseeing awards and research opportunities for BFA students at FSU, I feel like a guardian dragon protecting a trove of golden eggs. My goal is to provide our students with the resources and support they need to excel and become the future leaders of the art world. Seeing them grow and succeed fills me with a profound sense of fulfillment and happiness.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://carrieannbaade.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carrieannbaade
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carrieannbaade
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrieannbaade
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CarrieAnnBaade
- Yelp: https://laluzdejesus.com/gallery/carrie-ann-baade-scissors-tears-hardcover/
- Other: https://linktr.ee/CarrieAnnBaade?fbclid=IwAR2VePFHJ8PiOQABdaMwqpImxB4en9mQl2Uf-KvOwC_lzCK0EUcp3Dq54gk_aem_AW7yS72kYmeiFWZqc_Y048_nTs39RErMfymaGm_Xmn5Q4A1yOtcN1VDzEtrY2jHKTP7lMLbEwWCwpz_uWEFc6sWs
