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Douglas Baulos. Picture by Kyle Carpenter.

Associate Professor of Drawing and Bookmaking Art Studio
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Humanities Building 305B
(205) 975-2492

Education:

  • B.F.A., University of Alabama at Birmingham
  • M.F.A., University of New Orleans

He regularly teaches workshops and lectures on his research in book arts, drawing and mixed media. In 2009 Baulos won the President’s Award For Excellence In Teaching at UAB.

His current books are explorations (visual) and meditations (poetry) centering on his ideas of spirituality, love, death, shelter, and hope. Books, because of their exterior/interior format, as well as their sequential ordering, have been of particular interest lately. The book as an object allows the viewer to be guided through a thought process as well as evoking time and journey/text and image in an intimate fashion. Drawings are composed of myriad layers of media, ideas and associations. The process of piecing together an image is a meditative exercise, having as much to do with duration as physical texture or of following the thread of mindfulness. The abstraction of narrative is merged with the physicality of objects. As an artist Baulos wants to personify intangible experiences and feelings and make them tangible for an audience. There is an intimacy with the subject becoming object, with the reverence for the passed life and the confrontation of the doggedly present body. Retired objects (most recently dictionaries) and found papers are redeployed as agent of memory that can evoke and reflect on the history of private lives – worn and battered, certain found object evoke sympathy and empathy. Like a dog without a tail we notice an object or book’s history and pluck as survivor. Recently the work explores the idea of simultaneously linking the outside surface with inner experience, seeking to create books and sculptures that present themselves as humble objects that open into vast, imaginative space for the reader. By using discarded dictionaries (nests of birds) and transforming them into book sculptures, text and drawn images explode into an embodied narrative, a sculpture of our inner life.

Image Credit: Kyle Carpenter

Douglas Baulos Website

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