A mission from the heart

Alex Coolman

Joanne Baker makes connections.

Back in the ‘90s, they were connections in the art word: as owner of

the Costa Mesa gallery Timbuktu, she brought vibrant art from Africa,

Costa Rica, Haiti and other countries to Newport Beach.

Today, Timbuktu is closed. But Baker is still managing to bring people

together to do creative things, this time in an effort to provide relief

for flood victims in Mozambique.

In the garage of a neighbor’s home in Newport Beach, the results of

Baker’s efforts are piled in cardboard boxes and stuffed into black

plastic garbage bags.

Dresses and socks and pairs of shoes are bundled up for delivery to

Africa.

Pots and pans and a fax machine are waiting to be sent where they’re

needed.

The supplies won’t get to Mozambique right away, because they’re being

sent by container ship. But Baker says she’s thinking ahead.

“Once attention has died down, there’s still going to be plenty of

need,” she said. “The long-term need is what I’m thinking about.”

To some people, it may seem strange that a 48-year-old part-time nurse

would spend her time working to help people on the other side of the

world.

But for Baker, there’s a personal connection. In her world, there

usually is.

Back when she was running Timbuktu, Baker had a reputation for being

warm and receptive to people who were creative.

John Breuer, who brought her art from a women’s group in Costa Rica,

tells a typical story about Baker’s response to his first visit.

“I wandered in there one day and showed her the stuff,” Breuer said.

He had brought folk art the Costa Rican women had created, works in

acrylic paint on paper and canvas.

“She got really excited about it,” Breuer recalled. He ended up having

four shows at the gallery.

Much of the money from these shows went directly back to the women in

Costa Rica, Baker said. For the first show, in fact, 100% of the profit

was returned to the artists, a financial approach that Baker followed in

several other cases.

This idealistic approach to money, she readily admits, was one of the

reasons it was hard to keep Timbuktu going. But it was what she felt was

the right thing to do.

“It was something I could live with emotionally,” she said.

This kind of business sensibility led Baker to Mozambique through a

woman named Malena Ruth, who walked into Timbuktu one day in 1994 and

asked if she could have a job.

Something about Ruth resonated with Baker almost immediately. For one

thing, she was an artist: she made dolls whose elaborate costumes looked

good enough to wear to a ballroom.

Baker gave Ruth a job cleaning up around the store. But both women

seemed to realize that the money wasn’t the essential thing in their

relationship. What mattered was the friendship. The connection.

“Malena is from Mozambique,” Baker said. “She’s black and I’m white,

and I was raised during the apartheid era in South Africa. I left at the

age of 21 because I was against it.

“It was so fulfilling for me to be able to have a truly democratic

relationship with this person that I would not have been able to have a

relationship with when I was growing up.”

Years later, Ruth has become a fashion designer and has many clients

in Los Angeles. She no longer needs to sweep floors for a living.

But the connection between the women is still strong, and when Ruth’s

fiance asked Baker if she wanted to help with the African Millennium

Foundation to aid Mozambique flood victims, Baker didn’t hesitate.

“My feeling is that if I can, I must,” Baker said. “If I can just ask

my neighbor next door to give me old clothes, then I must. “I’m not very

creative, but I know how to follow.” The situation in Mozambique,

Baker says, is dire.

“There were thousands of people that lost their homes, thousands of

people that died.

“I really feel shameful that I’m not doing more than I’m doing.”

There are limits, though, to what Baker can do. In some ways, this was

the lesson of Timbuktu.

Though the gallery was, as Breuer put it, “a labor of love,” it was

still an expensive venture. About a year and half ago, Baker decided that

she needed, both financially and emotionally, to move on to something

else.

But the legacy of that store is a vein of cultural richness in Baker’s

life. The walls of her home are densely decorated with masks, dolls,

costumes, textiles and paintings. Her telephone sits on a wooden tiger

she brought back from Guerrero, Mexico, and her television set is adorned

with a papier-mache Virgin Mary.

And these objects, she says, are only the material symbols of

something more important the store gave her: a connection to the hearts

of people she cares about.

“What I like about that kind of art” that was sold at Timbuktu “was

that it represented a little bit of their soul,” Baker said.

“You don’t have to second-guess what they’re trying to say, and it’s

true and it’s real. That’s what spoke to me as a representative of these

people. We could bond right at the beginning.”

That bonding hasn’t stopped just because Timbuktu isn’t around any

more.

“So much of what my life is about now is what started with Timbuktu,”

she said. “That has opened up all those avenues to me.”

Penny Smith-Ginser, a Santa Ana middle school teacher who originally

met Baker during the days of the gallery, says she’s still energized by

Baker’s enthusiasm. She’s been collecting bedding to send to Mozambique.

“That’s just the kind of person she is,” Smith-Ginser said. “Whenever

there has been something special, Joanne calls me and says ‘Are you

interested?”’ And I say ‘Oh yes.”’