Read an Excerpt
This biography of John Firth Baker, illustrated with his work, is published in collaboration with The Virtual Museum of Modern American Manual Art, which organized and mounted the current Baker retrospective that commemorates the tenth anniversary of his death.
The book's title comes from the title of Baker's favorite poem:
The Song of the Earth
by Clorene Welles
I mother
& devour life.
I father forms
that thrive &
those that fade.
I'm husband
& wife,
windpipe
& knife.
I'm the sheath
that shields
& rusts its blade,
this patch of sunlight,
that patch of shade.
John Firth Baker was the first genetically engineered visual artist. A confluence of fundamental contemporary expressions of creativity-science, art, and religion-made him into a uniquely twenty-first-century phenomenon.
A bound and printed book like this is a fit commemorative for Baker, who cherished bound books. Baker was a self-taught manual artist; his figurative images, always the work of his own hands, appeal to the sense of touch, as well as sight. They convey Baker's deepest feelings, his fantasies and dreams. The political and sectarian uses to which his art was put by others made him famous at nineteen; then he was murdered.
Baker was posthumously transformed into a myth, which continues to grow. His work is now given an iconic significance he never consciously intended. Gaians claim the images he made, particularly those they call "Baker's Dozen," are tangible visions of his quest for Gaian Consciousness.
John Firth Baker's inner life was more complex-far richer-than that. He died before he could fulfill his promise as an artist. Yet his handful of work endures. Baker was an American original. This book tells his whole story for the first time.
I organized The Song of the Earth around interviews I
