Biography

Architecturally scaled to fill the field of vision, Joell Baxter’s work shifts restlessly between the tactile and the perceptual to achieve a state of visual and spatial flux. Made through a process of cutting, turning, and piecing sections of hand printed and woven paper that are pinned provisionally to the wall, overlapping shapes and colors mutate and waver as the viewer moves closer to and around each piece. Hard cut edges meet soft fades of color, and taut grids are overlaid with loose weaves that sag and pull and press against the surface of the room. Baxter draws from color theory, the science of vision, the history of weaving and quilt making, and the mutability of pixels. Inherently porous, weaving creates an uneasy equilibrium between presence and absence, material and non-material. The interlocking warp and weft of each panel forms a grid, recalling the rigorous, generative language of minimalism, while the saturated, shifting colors recall the flickering light of pixelated screens.The work functions as a sort of net or pixilated plane that catches and disperses molecules of light. Joell Baxter lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Recent solo and two person exhibitions include the Marsh Gallery at Indiana University; Field Projects, New York, NY; and Real Art Ways, Hartford, Ct. She has been awarded residencies at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; the Lower Eastside Printshop, New York; and Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.