Who Baile is
“To use our visual language to help bring our culture to a fuller understanding of our place within the living systems of the Earth.”
Baile is an environmental sculptor, author, and educator, one of the generation who took their work out of the gallery and into the land, making forms that don't depict nature so much as cooperate with it. His language keeps returning to a few shapes: the seed, the egg, the oculus, thresholds you step through or stand inside, tuned to the turning of the sun. His materials are cedar, redwood, and bronze; his subject is cyclical time.
He taught environmental sculpture at the College of the Redwoods and served on the California Arts Council's advisory panel for art in public places. He was a founding voice in the early ecological-art movement: on the Ecoart listserv, and a consultant for the Green Museum.
In 1995 he gathered thirty-five environmental artists into one book, Sculpting with the Environment: A Natural Dialogue, with essays by Suzi Gablik, Fritjof Capra, and Thomas Berry, an argument, in many voices, that art can change how a culture lives on the Earth.
Today the work continues off the pedestal: he is building a permaculture homestead, with the hope of living without harming the systems that hold us up.
“I strive to create forms with my sculptures that evoke a sense of balance and growth that is inherent in the natural world. My hope is that these works will help bring to the viewer a sense of the dynamic balance of nature that sustains all life.”
“Gestation is a homage to the ever-present nurture and progression of the life force of our planet. I sincerely hope that it will once more take its place in the center of the city and the heart of its population.”
“I dedicated the sculpture, when I was building it, to regeneration and peace. I thought it was very appropriate, sitting next to the Russian exhibit, when we're talking about life and they're talking about obliterating.”