Left: Hilary Baker, 1727 E. 107th Street, 2017, Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 inches; Right: Hilary Baker, High Voltage, 2021, Acrylic on linen, 24 x 24 inches | Credit: Josef Woodard
As implied in its name, the Wildling Museum of Art and Nature in Solvang takes conscientious aim at nature in its element, generally focusing on art about the natural and animal world. Something slightly different is afoot with artist Hilary Baker’s fascinating exhibition Wildlife on the Edge. A Los Angeles native, now based in Ojai, Baker sidesteps the natural world, per se, and deals — in her clever, cagey artistic language — with the uncomfortable intersection of wild animal life and urban/suburban spaces. The show gains relevance at a time when weather and drought conditions are driving wild animals into human-occupied areas , including Santa Barbara.
A bear lurks in a 7-Eleven parking lot. A mountain lion evokes both languid sensuality and potential peril outside the suave, now-defunct Parisian Room in Los Angeles, and a bat perches above the Hollywood Bowl, unimpressed. An implied question in Baker’s show: Which is the intruder, resident animal life or human-imposed developments on once unspoiled land?
