On the corner of Piedras and Aurora, there’s a house that looks like the ruins of an ancient temple. It is overtaken with vines and desert foliage and the plot of land is populated by sculptures that look like gods that could have been worshiped by the likes of the Maya or Aztec. This house belongs to local sculptor, Ho Baron.
“For a long time, people had stories about the house,” Baron said. “They thought I was a strange cult or a devil worshiper.”
Baron is, in fact, a visionary, whose fertile imagination is out of this time and out of this world. Baron’s art transcends reality and boldly embraces the abstract and surreal.
“My work is intuitive,” Baron said. “I don’t consider myself trained, my work isn’t really refined, it’s just an expression.”
The largest piece in Baron’s yard is called the Water God. The statue was inspired by a trip he had taken to Asia.
“I went to the historic commission and asked if they would let me put a figure outside,” Baron said. “I said I was going to put a Buddha-like figure, so when It was finished, they said, ‘Where’s the Buddha?’ I said, ‘No, I said a Buddha-like figure.’”
The Water God looks like a peaceful alien prophet. Baron said he made the body first and the head separately and didn’t know what it what it was going to look like. The statue used to function as a fountain but the running water darkened the crotch which brought complaints from the neighbors.
Baron’s style is simple yet extremely detailed upon closer inspection. You could tell he really works his fingers and his soul into the clay.
“The process is so involved, so I am able to make the pieces real intricate,” Baron said. “I work slowly on my pieces. There’s no hurry, the world’s not waiting, and as you get older, time is less important. I used to do pen and ink drawings in twenty minutes, now if I do a sculpture, if it takes me six months – it’s okay.”
Baron has spent thousands of dollars to fuel his passion. The sculpting and casting process, although relatively unchanged for thousands of years, is costly.
“Over the years I have probably spent $400,000 on my sculptures. Mostly on casting in a foundry, and materials and hauling the stuff around,” Baron said.
Since his work is so different, he has a hard time selling it and has begun to accumulate in his home. Most of his pieces are stored in the basement, since they’re too heavy to keep on the top floors or could be found in various places outside in his yard. Baron’s gods have slowly taken over his home but it seems like the takeover is mutual.
That’s because Baron admires his work like a father would admire his child. This is fitting, since there is a child like playfulness found in his sculptures. Most of his children look mischievous, some look like they’re giggling or trying to converse with you. Either way, Baron’s sculptures will pique your curiosity and grab your attention.
“My style and what I do is a statement, the irony is people are intimidated by originality, you would think in the art world that it’s about originality, not necessarily, it’s about norms, what we can relate to,” Baron said.
The artist enjoys playing with the human form. His sculptures often have multiple faces contorted in funny ways or limbs that are twisted and bent into unnatural poses and genitalia is placed in odd places. If Baron’s gods are not posing in a comical way, they look they’re in motion, some like they were frozen in mid twirl during a dramatic dance.
“I like Cirque de Solei and contortionist,” Baron said. “I found a guy in Juarez that could make the armatures for me, so I‘d give him photographs and he’d recreate the form in rebar for me.”
Baron is in many ways a bona fide artist. His bizarre sculptures are truly unconventional and are sometimes scorned by people with conservative tastes. His appearance is very much like that of an artist. His hair is curly and unkempt, his manner of dress is very matter of factly, the lines in his face and the tone of his voice are those of a well traveled person, and telling from his history, he is a restless spirit.
Baron was born in Chicago in 1941. His family moved to El Paso in 1950 and he graduated from El Paso High School in 1959. He attended UTEP when it was still known as Texas Western and graduated from there in 1963. He received a masters in English from the University of Arizona in 1965 and soon after joined the Peace Corp where he served in West Africa and Ethiopia until 1968.
“I was a teacher in a little village in Nigeria, being in Africa is a real eye opener,” Baron said. “People were going to Vietnam at the time, I didn’t evade the draft, I kind of avoided it.”
After his stint in the Peace Corp, he lived in Europe and worked with a group of cartoonists in Antwerp, Belgium. He then lived in a commune in New York and worked as a teacher in the Virgin Islands.
“I think subconsciously my travels have influenced my imagery,” Baron said.
Baron spent some time in Philadelphia, where he managed a library and began sculpting. He enrolled in a sculpting class at the local college of art and became enamored with the challenge and the medium’s methods. When he returned to El Paso during the 80’s, he took another sculpting class where he learned the casting process. He settled in his current home in 1984 and the 68 year old artist currently works as a part time librarian at El Paso Community College’s Transmountain Campus.
Over the years, Baron has completed four to five pieces a year and in recent years cast his pieces in a foundry in Juarez. These days, Baron said he is not eager to cast another piece because of the problems in Juarez and the expense. He is not working on any new pieces, he is more concerned with selling the over 200 original pieces he has completed.
Despite having found no commercial success, Baron says his art is his passion and he will continue on with it.
“I think of my pieces as humorous, some people see them as droll and grotesque,” Baron said. “I don’t represent Southwest art, I don’t do cowboys and Indians, I don’t do Virgin Mary’s, I do interesting images.”
by M. De Santiago
photographs by Joey Lozano
