Nicole Baker finds healing in art

Every pregnant woman anxiously awaits the birth of her child. When the baby is born healthy, it is a joy. Nicole Baker felt that joy when her baby girl was born. But it morphed into unspeakable sorrow when the baby died suddenly four days later.

It was a time of great emotional pain. “I was afraid, really afraid,” Baker told Arts and Education in a one-on-one conversation. She was scared, and every time she thought about her loss, she cried. So much was going on. Apart from being an instructor at the School of Hope in Papine, St Andrew, she was also a student at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

She got pregnant and gave birth while she was still a student, and the final year of her Bachelor of Fine Arts programme was looming. It entailed a major project that culminated in an exhibition, which closed recently. It was inspired by her loss and the attendant trauma that it put her through. She was putting her personal experience out there.

In the emotional turmoil, she had to be conceptualising, creating, self-critiquing, working around the loss and trauma, and constantly asking, “Why? Why? Why?” When the answers were not coming she said all she could do was “cry, cry, cry”. From Sunday to Sunday, through sleepless nights, she was translating her trauma into art, and her instructors were there pushing and motivating her at the same time.

STRONG MOTIVATION

“I have a strong motivational background … My mom, she is there 100 per cent … Mr Aloa (one of her instructors) … It has been a journey, and I thank God. I haven’t given up, I haven’t lost faith, and I want to say thanks to all who have been there with me, motivated me, never giving up, stuck with me throughout,” she said. As the tears came, she continued: “I thank them because dem push mi, dem push mi … Nevertheless, we came to the end, and I am feeling very proud.”

“Overwhelmed” was another adjective she used. For on show was a variety of artwork, paintings, chasing and repousse (metal plate sculpting), and fashion jewellery that squeezed sweat and tears from her for they were about her sadness and loss. Every piece is about trauma, she said.

The centrepiece of the show was a huge and colourful abstract painting, which she said is full of her teardrops. If only the canvas could talk, she mused. “I used colours to say that even though I am traumatised, I have to move on, I have to be happy,” she explained. It was about breaking out of the enclosure of sadness.

Her neckpieces are big and arresting. They are wearable art that makes a statement and adorns the wearer’s neck. Three of them in particular poignantly exuded the essence of the show. The ‘pendant’ on each represents a different trimester of the gestation.

Even more poignant is an assemblage of some of the items that had been bought for the baby. They, too have become art, symbolic of the loss and the healing. She said they had to be there as they are part of the story, the story of how she went through three full trimesters, had her child, and then it “disappeared”. She hopes to sell the pieces, except the tear-stained painting.

Nicole Baker said she is not 100 per cent healed, but her artistry pushed her to do things that help her to heal, to move on, while her baby girl is still in her thoughts. “I had to get it out there. Being afraid of my story won’t help me and help others she explained … As a feminist, it will push me to help others to feel what I feel,” she said.