Meet The Artists

Interview with Freddie Baker LLMSW (they/them), Therapist at Transformational Choices.

Matthew Mills: Let's just start with a little introduction. Who are you?
 

Freddie Baker: So, my name is Freddie and that name is very important to me because it's one that I've actually chosen for myself and one that I've been using for the past six years or so now. And with that name change came a change in my gender identity. Initially I didn't think that the two were connected, I just thought, "Oh, I don't really like my birth name, so I'm just going to pick a nickname and go with it." I was in college. I was meeting new people. I was making new friends. So, it was very easy to just be, "My name is actually just Freddie." And I could meet people as that person. But it then became really apparent that my discomfort with my given name was beyond just not liking it as a name and was rooted more in gender identity and expression.
   I was brought up as a girl. I was brought up as a woman. And for a long time, I thought that was my identity. Around six years ago, I learned about what it meant to be non-binary, and that was an option. The more that I learned about it, and the more that I thought about it, the more that I said, "Hey, wait a minute. I think this is what I've been feeling for my entire life." I could look back through my childhood and feel all of these moments of confusion and just general uncomfortability, but I never had a name for it. Learning about a non-binary gender identity put voice and gave language to an experience that I'd already been having up until that point.
   But I grew up kind of Christian conservative, so I didn't even know what [non-binary] was. Since I started to see myself that way, I felt this huge weight lift off of me and I just felt so much clarity and so much self-acceptance and so much confidence in ways that I didn't even know were affecting me. And kind of since then, the idea of myself has expanded that I can't even really put words to. I live and I breathe, and I’m Freddie. 

 
Matthew Mills: I think that's a very poetic way of putting it, not being to define it is almost like defining in itself. I have been talking to people about their art and they were saying that their creative process is something they can't define or explain necessarily. How can you relate to the emotion and feelings involved in who you as a non-binary person are and also art that you create?

Freddie Baker: Yeah, that's a really good question. I definitely agree with struggling to put language on things and I think that's why art inherently is so needed and so valuable. Language assumes a culture. Language assumes a certain set of schemas around words. For example, if I say dog then it gives you a picture of a dog in your head, but the dog you’re envisioning might be totally different from the dog I’m picturing. I have a totally different schema for that. But there's no way to actually convey that to you because all I can do is say dog. So I think art creates an opportunity for connection that transcends language. Art provides ways of connecting to another human being without having to rely on the model of language which is inherently imperfect
   To connect that to queerdom, cisgender people are not going to understand this feeling [of being non-binary]. No matter how many times I try to sit with my friend who's cisgender and explain it, and no matter what language I put into it or how many words I use it's not going to always click. And I think that's where art comes into play. It is giving different mediums and different opportunities to express and explain all of these ideas that people might not be able to inherently understand. 

Matthew Mills: I feel like that's an important thing during this art show that we want to highlight is the storytelling ability of art. There is the classic statement that a picture is worth a thousand words. And I honestly think it's true, you know. An artist is conveying a story or a message through whatever means or mediums available to them.
   And something that we're trying to do with the art show is to have artists express themselves by reflecting on the theme of the art show: building bridges and creating a community. You kind of hit on it with your connection to the queer community, but how do you think that art and community can intersect?

Freddie Baker: I think it functions on so many different levels because in a lot of cultures around the world they are defined in some ways by the art that they make. For example, African bead work, or indigenous regalia and various symbols they may use. And that's indicative of culture and community, which have specific cultural values and connotations that members of a community might be more intimately aware of than someone outside the community.  So I think in that way art can be representational of specific communities and specific cultures. Art is a way of showing solidarity between people of a certain culture and can be a way of empowerment, expression, and celebration of a culture.
   But specific cultures aside, there's also the larger human community where every human person and various cultures from everywhere across the globe, are making stuff and making art. I think that's something that really unites the entire global community through art being a true common language that we all can share.

Matthew Mills: I like that you hit on a point of a universality of art. Creating is a very human thing to do. To create or express yourself, or express emotions in various mediums. So we talked earlier and you mentioned earlier that you went to a queer art exhibit in Chicago, right?

Freddie Baker: Yes! Yes.

Matthew Mills: Tell me a little bit about your experiences with that and how the queer community embraces art or the similarities or messages that you saw in different pieces of art.

Freddie Baker: Oh my gosh, I would love to because it was truly a beautiful life-changing exhibit and if you get a chance. I cannot recommend it enough. It was four rooms and to the best of my knowledge, one of them was nature, one of them was nightlife, one of them was activism and the final one was cinema. I resonated the most with the nature section, specifically about how it was reflecting on this idea that queerness is natural and queerness is this force that is not chosen but is given to us.
   In the same way that some animals are queer, you know, like homosexuality has been observed in like 90% of like various species, there's fish that change genders, there's fungi that have like 23,000 some genders or something like that. I think that was really particularly moving to me because of my own held identity as a non-binary person and receiving, you know, a lot of flack for that from the world and feeling like “no, like this is actually just me and this is part of nature and I was made like this and it's beautiful that I'm made like this.” 

So to see various queer artists expressing that and giving space to a feeling I already held made me feel very connected. It made me feel not alone, like there are so many people out there who understand what I'm feeling and I know that shared feeling exists because I can look at this image and see nature reflected in my identity and my identity reflected in nature. I am part of this collective that sees and feels these things. I am not alone. 

There was so much variety in terms of what was made and mediums chosen and some of it wasn't my experience. There was a series of photographs that were taken in a kink convention. And I was like, "Oh, like that's not really a space that I occupy." But I can have appreciation and reverence for that because we belong to the same larger queer community. I can see that and I can say that the artist is celebrating this space that they’re in, and I'm going to join you in celebrating that instead of shaming. The queer community gets enough shit from the world, and I'm not gonna contribute to that from the inside.

I found myself thinking “how beautiful is the human experience?” How beautiful it is to be a part of this collective that is so rich, so varied and expresses itself in endlessly beautiful ways. I think that also gives me permission, encourages,  and reminds me that there is room for standing up and making art to express myself. Because when I celebrate myself, I'm also celebrating queerness.
 
Matthew Mills: There are western norms and standards that make queerness seem unnatural and that's not necessarily the case. I mean there's still an unfortunately large portion of society who still kind of thinks that way.

Freddie Baker: Humans are animals and we are just as much a part of nature as anything else. And nature is weird and nature is confusing, so why are we to assume that humans are any less weird or any less varied? 

 
Matthew Mills: Shifting gears a little bit more towards the clinical aspect of like art and the overlap between mental health and art. What is your experience with art and how has it affected your mental health? 

Freddie Baker: I think there's something really liberating in creating and to know that you're not bound by words or constrained by making something that's supposed to be understood by other people. It's like when a person makes art, there's a part of creating that's like ‘I want this to land and to connect with somebody else’ but there's a larger and realer part of it that's like ‘I am making this because it's eating away at me inside and I need to put it into the world and make it real.’

For my own journey of mental health, I've struggled pretty severely with suicidality throughout my life, and that's something that still continues to plague me off and on. But being able to make art about the experience is one way that I can feel in control and sense of ownership over that. Also I know that when I write, I'm not doing it so it makes sense to other people. I'm writing so what I feel is made more finite, because in my brain it's so big that I feel I get lost and trapped in the emotion. It's contained and it's within the bounds of a piece of art, and it feels digestible and manageable. It might be just as visceral, just as gut-wrenching, and it might be hard to write it down. 

I think that's what is so important for the mental health space and why art therapy can be so beneficial. It allows people to take ownership over what's happened to them or what they've been suffering from and allows them to make sense of it, and allows them to have command over it, even if they don't feel that sense of power in any other area of their life. I might not be able to do anything about the fact that I struggle with suicidality, but I can do something about how I choose to express that. And that gives you the power back and gives you the control back.

Matthew Mills: You make an important point about the ownership of feelings. We all have these feelings, some stronger than others, and putting them out in the open can be a vulnerable experience, but taking ownership of these big feelings can be something to be proud of as well. Do you often use art as a self-care tool?

Freddie Baker: I would love to say yes, but for multiple periods in my life, art has been a part of myself that I've neglected or I didn't feel like I had capacity for. In the way that a lot of artists do, I wrestle with a lot of self- judgment where I'll write down something and then I go, "Oh, that's not good. I don't like it." Then I get myself in a negative feedback loop and don't give myself permission to create something and allow it to be bad. I think like giving yourself permission to express and giving yourself permission to make something, even if it's shitty, even if it's bad, even if you make it and then don't like it, I think it's just good for processing. It's just such a human thing to do and that's something to lean into and that's something to embrace.

 
Matthew Mills: Focusing on the outcome can be discouraging or push you away from creating. And like you were saying earlier, there's inherent value in the creation process itself, whether it's something that's deemed good by you or others, there's value to be had outside of this good or bad binary, right?

Freddie Baker: Yes. And it's about letting go of the idea that anything you make has to be perfect and finding the beauty in wrestling with a piece of art because that's also like wrestling with your feelings. Instead of viewing yourself less than or that you've made something bad and are not worthy of making art, reframing it as getting to go on this journey of feeling and of exploring yourself.

Matthew Mills: Do you feel that art is more preventative or more reactive, in terms of being used as a tool for mental health?

Freddie Baker: In a very classic queer non-binary way, I'm going to say both. I think there's a lot of merit in making art about things that have already happened to you and reacting and expressing how you've been impacted by things that have already happened to you. And I think there's also something to be said for making art in times of peace and in times of joy where it becomes less about wrestling with things and more about art as a celebration. In a preventative sense, working those muscles, that practice creating things so that when shit happens, you're prepared to use art as an outlet. I think one can't really exist without the other.

Matthew Mills: Yeah, I feel like a lot of art therapy itself is more reactive and like let's get these emotions out on paper, but I do think that like the preventative de-stressing self-care aspect of art is also very important to people.

Freddie Baker: Yes. And I think it ties in with a lot of the larger conversation about coping mechanisms, which is like don't only use your coping mechanisms when you need to cope. Use them when you're feeling happy. Celebrate feeling good! Celebrate feeling stable. Celebrate feeling bored.

Matthew Mills: It’s reinforcing.

Freddie Baker: Exactly. Seeing art less as merit-based, ‘I have to produce something good,’ and more as just a behavior that we do. If we are human creatures and if we are animals and if we are part of nature, and if making art is just one of our natural behaviors and we should just do it.

Matthew Mills: Just to wrap up here, are there any final thoughts or things that you had in mind or things that you want to promote at all?

Freddie Baker: It has to exist in order for it to get better. You can't edit a blank page. If it exists and it's sucky, that's better than you debating about making something and not making it at all. Having art exist should be the goal. Do the thing and make bad art! You are worthy of making bad art. You're allowed to make shitty bad art!