Seeking Clarity: A Sneak Peek into Sam Baker’s Upcoming Show

Texas native Sam Baker creates music and art for the same reason – a magnetic pull to clarify the world around him.

Baker’s art arrives in the gallery next Thursday, August 18. All are invited to join the SEAD Gallery in a public reception for Baker’s show “Everyone is at the mercy of another one’s dream” in the gallery at 6:30 pm.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Baker said of the upcoming show. “As I get older, I just feel so lucky that I get to do so much of what I want to do in life with people that I want to do it with. That has been a great gift.”

In 1986, Baker was severely wounded in a terrorist attack on a train en route to Machu Picchu. After years of life saving surgeries and echoes of those horrific moments on the train, Baker turned to music and art to express what simple words couldn’t.

“[What] drew me to music was the need or desire to say something, to clarify something, to make more sense of it to me,” Baker said. “I’m not sure I did it to make more sense to anybody else but me; that same wave that pushed music, and writing to music, is the same wave that’s pushing the painting. I think the urge to create, the need to clarify, is what pushes me.”

Baker’s show will feature his painted prints and oil paintings. He says the show doesn’t have a specific theme; and that’s the point. To Baker, “art is putting emotionalism in context,” and hopes his art can help viewers frame their own lives as it has helped him.

“Other people that have sung songs and have painted things have helped me immensely figure out who I am and what my role is and how it relates to another person’s role,” Baker said. “[Art] helps me respond to people that I’m around everyday, and not mystical people that live in Siberia or Kenya, but the people that are in my world, especially my family. My world radiates very closely from them, and I think that art not only helps me understand who I am, but who they are.”

Baker’s show “”Everyone is at the mercy of another one’s dream” opens next Thursday, August 18 with a public reception in the SEAD Gallery at 6:30 pm.