My lack of updates here has not been from lack of work, but rather the opposite. This final semester of school has been one of the busiest of my life, and I proved to myself and to my school that I have both the skills and the work ethic to produce successful pieces of art.
The main focus of my semester has been my senior thesis, the final piece of which you can see above. For my thesis I decided to provide an institutional critique of education through the lense of the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP program. My thesis was broken down into a solo show and a final group show with all of the other seniors.
Senior thesis solo show
My solo show consisted of seven hanging sheets of acetate containing text related to education. The end pieces were the definition of a student and a university, respectively, taken from the OED and printed onto a sheet of acetate. Moving inward, the text was taken from school and student group mission statements as well as faculty and student interviews. This text was hand-inked onto the acetate and became messier and less discernable toward the center. My goal was to present the two sides of education and show the struggle between them.
I also included paper on the wall for viewers to share their thoughts and opinions on various related topic. This way, viewers were invited into the space of work and could add to the piece. In doing so, the work became more social and opened a necessary dialogue within the institution.
This piece hung in the halls of DAAP for the three days of my solo show and transformed throughout its short life in that space.
For the second part of my senior thesis, I presented a variation of the above work in the DAAPWorks show, an exhibition of all the DAAP senior’s work. For this, my work was hung in a gallery, so I reimagined and added to it.
Thesis piece in DAAPWorks gallery
With this piece, I rehung the acetate in an ascending fashion, with a final empty bar, and a painting on the wall. The piece was titled “Raising the Bar,” which was my call to the School of Art students and faculty to improve our overall quality and effort. Whereas my piece in the solo show was an objective view of education and DAAP, this piece involved my own thoughts and feelings on the subject.
The struggle of education is a Sisyphusian task
My piece also won the Director’s Choice Award. Not too shabby.
And after this, I still managed to graduate, go me!
Me and my lovely sister, who recently graduated with her Masters degree
Of course, I made a lot of other art during the semester, and hopefully I will get around to posting more soon!
JJ Baker: Artist at Large 
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Thanks for the shout out