Alyssa Baker (she/they)
Based in Cincinnati, OH
Alyssa Baker (MFA Candidate, Clark University; BFA, University of Cincinnati DAAP) is a Cincinnati-based printmaker and mixed-media artist whose work explores trauma, healing, and resilience through the language of the natural world. Her practice is rooted in early, quiet experiences of watching birds—sitting in stillness learning a language made of gestures, rhythms, and warnings. These moments formed an understanding of communication beyond words, one that continues to shape her work.
Working with colored pencil and stone lithography on mulberry paper, alongside intricately hand-cut silhouettes, Baker creates deeply tactile pieces that explore predator–prey relationships, mimicry, and survival. Birds appear throughout her work not as symbols, but as witnesses—beings that grieve, adapt, teach, and pass knowledge through generations.
Rooted in lived experience, Alyssa’s work is a collection of quiet confrontations and moments of exchange between bodies, across branches, and under the weight of memory. Her practice centers softness, survival, and transformation, creating space where silence is not empty but full of story.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My first memories of birds are quiet ones, sitting beside my nana in the stillness of summer, watching hummingbirds slam their small, delicate bodies into others for their chance at the feeders. We didn’t speak. We listened. In that silence, I began to understand their language not as words, but as gestures, warnings, rhythms. After being assaulted, I turned back to that silence. Back to birds. I watched them grieve, adapt, and communicate. I learned they pass knowledge through generations, calls, songs, rituals. I learned they mourn. And they learn. And they linger.
Through colored pencil and stone lithography on soft, delicate mulberry paper, I explore the fragility of memory and the persistence of presence. These materials tear easily, hold impressions deeply, and speak softly. The birds in my work are not symbols. They are witnesses. This is a space where birds are heard, and trees remember. Where silence is not empty, but full of story.
My work is a collection of quiet confrontations, moments of communication passed between bodies, across branches, under the weight of memory. My work is rooted in these observations of nature. I study mimicry and the ways humans and animals mirror one another in survival. I hear my nana in the bark of trees, “Don’t pick at the bark, it kills the tree!” But I’ve learned that sometimes, picking is what allows healing to begin.