GALLERY BAIRD presents
Curators Picks -2019
Gallery Baird organizers Vanessa Baird and Liz Belyea have picked their favorite pieces shown in 2019.
AUDREY SZETO
Seattle, Washington
You’re a new addition to the crayon box: which color are you, and why?Mystic Smoke: an iridescent grey that brings a bit of mystery to everything.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
Fail and Fail often
What is your favorite part of the artistic process?
I love the very beginning of a project. That moment when you’ve come up with an idea, get wildly excited about it, and your head and heart start to race with the excitement of all the possibilities ahead.
What did your path to art look like?
Art has been part of me from the very beginning and will be till the very end. This uncontrollable need to create is my way of life and i can’t imagine living without it.
DANIELLE M. POTWIN
Belmont, Massachusetts
What color would you be and why?Fire Engine Red. I feel like it’s my “power” color.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
“Make a decision.” Chuck Stigliano…also, Taylor Davis once told me to give myself permission to do what I want in my studio practice—-but I also think that looking at other artists’ work also encourages that permission.
What’s your favorite part of the process?
The “playing” and the observation.
What did your path to art look like? My mother was a huge influence on me as a child as she was always drawing, sewing, crafting and was an active calligrapher. As a kid, I LOVED photographing. I have fond memories of my first 110 film camera and still use my first 35 MM Pentax Asahi to shoot in black and white film... As I moved into adolescence, I started to draw a bit from observation and photographed more, but never thought about being a working artist. I went to vocational high school where I learned how to run a printing press, but didn't really continue with this after high school for too long because I really didn't enjoy it. I decided to go to Salem State University for Theater Communication (I was active in theater/singing all through high school as well), but wasn't ready for college. I was 20 when I decided I wanted to be a cook in the restaurant business and spent the next almost 15 years learning as much as I could. I was a sous chef, pastry chef and line cook with my last food industry job being in R&D for a gourmet cookie company. During all of this, I was also raising my daughter and making art part-time; I had taught myself how to paint in oils and started to photograph digitally. I realized at one point in my R&D job that I just didn't want to be in the food business anymore and I wanted art-making/potentially teaching to be a full-time path. I decided to go back to school for my BFA with the full support of my partner, which was a huge leap, but totally Worth It.
DAVE BAACK
Seattle, Washington
You’re a new addition to the crayon box: which color are you and why?
I’d have to be the “Golden Hour” crayon. The one that adds depth and dimension to subjects.
Whats the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
If you don’t practice contentment now, you wont be happy when you get what you want.
What is your favorite part of the artistic process?
Seeing the print. Printing is so crucial, and yet so rare.
What did your path to art look like?
In my personal work i take a somewhat depersonalized approach to photography. I tend to wonder aimlessly for hours, kind of following the light I take on a more insular personality, often using music to get more “into my head” and visualize the world like a screen in a theater - something separate from myself. I also find it interesting to impose certain limitations upon myself to see what kind of unorthodox decisions I might make. These limitations can mean shooting after dark, limiting my focal length, going into less “photogenic “ arias, or finding underrepresented features of popular landmarks.
The second half of my process takes place during the editing process. I try to give my images a good review shortly after the take of the photos but delve deeper weeks or months later, looking for the less obvious and more intuitive choices I may have made.
Much of what I am really happy with makes the social media rounds, but its a rare treat to get to actually share a displayed print. I hope that if you’re reading this you will continue to support the arts and keep coming out and showing up to see what people are making.
BREANA FERRARA
Fitchburgh, Massachusetts
You’re a new addition to a crayon box. Which color would you be, and why?
I’d be Organ Pink, both beautiful/organic, but also repulsive and unsettling all at the same time.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?When somebody copies your work or design, if you haven’t already come up with something better by then, you have no business being an artist
What is your favorite part of the artistic process?I love the ideas/brainstorming process the most. Sometimes I think about how many ideas I have and how I will probably only ever be able to produce maybe 10 percent of them, but it is just fun to get excited about new inspiration and new ideas. I love researching and selecting materials and planning and the freshness that comes with new work. Of course I love when I can bring these ideas into reality, too, but the happiest I am is when I conceive that idea that makes me excited to keep making and evolving as a jeweler
What your path to art look like?
Despite my fears of not being “good enough” at fine art (I was never great at drawing, painting, etc) and wanting to be a writer, on a whim/gut feeling I decided to apply to art school to be a fashion designer. I knew that I loved to sew and make clothing, and I was really hoping that by being a fashion designer that someday I could make truly inclusive plus size clothing. I am really passionate about fat activism and body positivity and I thought that might be a good outlet to make the changes I wanted to in the world. Well, upon starting my classes at MassArt, I got a feeling that for some reason fashion wasn’t all that I wanted it to be, that I’d have to wait so long before making the changes I wanted to, and that I wasn’t competitive enough to be in the fashion world. My first semester freshman year I took a jewelry and metalsmithing class and I was hooked! I had never done any metalsmithing before, I had only ever made cold-connected/beaded jewelry, and there was something really satisfying about the level of craft necessary to be successful in jewelry making. I’m not a natural perfectionist and my hand skills weren’t that great at the time, and seeing all of these amazing techniques and feeling like “Wow, how can I ever learn this? Achieve this level of perfection?” and then practicing a lot and getting there, was so incredibly satisfying. After that jewelry class I decided to stick with it and become a Metals major. I have always loved incorporating other materials/techniques, my work is super informed by my background in sewing and fibers, but I always love the challenge of being a jeweler. Not that the former isn’t challenging, but it definitely comes more natural to me than metalsmithing, so I love being forced to perfect my hand skills because being a jeweler, any and every mistake will show and I love being held accountable in that way.
After graduating with my BFA, I have worked as a studio assistant to various local makers, I’ve been a teaching assistant and a teacher in metals and fibers, and in the meantime I’m maintaining my own studio practice. I feel so grateful that I followed my gut feeling and went to art school, there is nothing I’d rather be doing as my career. I am also grateful that I did go to school for it, I think art school isn’t necessary for everybody, but to me it was. I needed that time and the skills to learn to hold myself accountable for craft and care in what I’m making.
FRIJKE COUMANS
Nijmegen, Netherlands
You’re a new addition to the crayon box: which color are you and why?I guess blue. It was the first color that popped up in my head. Blue carries a poetry that I can not express in works, in which she defines herself as a color.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
Life is playing. Playing exerts the ability to deal with spontaneity, chaos, and surprise. You depend on someone else’s actions, you cannot stick to a pre-planned plan, it makes no sense to map out and think of everything in advance. In the game you have to act according to what is happening in the moment.
What is your favorite part of the artistic process?
When I’m completely absorbed in a scene or in a shoot, and the moment I know exactly what to do without thinking or doubting.
What did you path to art look like?
Shooting, editing, shooting again, looking, writing, thinking, composing, presenting.
HAYDEN STERN
Seattle, Washington
You’re a new addition to a crayon box: which color are you, and why?
I would be teal- I love colors that defy neat categorization (and find the premise relatable!). As a human I am vibrant and difficult to slot into a single box, which is very teal to me.
What is your favorite part of he artistic process?
Whenever you feel afraid or disgusted by your own impulses, lean in and be curious. We don’t feel stuff for no reason, and while that reason may or may not be literal, asking ourselves “when has it been adaptive for me to behave this way?'“ can help us find more life sustaining ways to meet that same need.
What did you path to art look like?
I have always made art, but my path to professional artistry has wound its way through some nontraditional settings. For much of my life, art was my way to survive extreme circumstances. Now, in part of my life that looks and f feels much mores stable, my work allows me to celebrate the resilience of marginalized bodies - the way we refuse to stop existing, the way we gather and share wisdom and kindness and rage. At least partially, I am a working artist because I want to see more art that looks like me ad m friends (trans, fat, mad, disabled), because seeing art that looked like me would have been life changing when i was a kid.
KELLAN KIRKLAND
Seattle, Washington
BRITINA CHENG
Brooklyn, New York
What is your favorite part of he artistic process?In terms of production, the moment you start to lose your sense of time while making your art -- it is enthralling. I feel this most when I’m inking or when I’m doing post-production on a film. When I was inking re:bound, I sat in a library and listened to podcasts. I’d look up and three hours had passed. Look up again, another three hours.
What did you path to art look like?I worked as a gallery assistant for the duration of my college career doing installations and working in the archives. In my own time I took photographs and made short films. I only started illustrating more seriously post-college when I thought up a project.
ST CELFER
Seattle, Washington
You’re a new addition to the crayon box: which color are you, and why?
Duh, red. The color of life - at least to us humans.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
Don’t care what other people say about you or your work. This has proved really hard to do.
What is your favorite part of the artistic process?
Starting. It is all downhill from there. Like keeping sand from slipping through your hands. Craft, manufacture, production are your enemies.
What did your path to art look like?
All roads lead here. Like red, art is life.
AURA COLOME ROIG
Barcelona, Spain
You’re a new addition to the crayon box: which color are you, and why?I would be the color of the dry blood.
On the oil painting palette, the “Rojo Inglés Oscuro” (Titan 102)… It’s always been my favorite.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?To write every day.
What is your favorite part of the artistic process?
The action; the hands-on. I love the creation and experimenting along the way, and enjoy the surprise of new results.
What did your path to art look like?
As a child I was lucky and my mother brought me to music lessons, where I learned the violin. At the age of 16, I started going to the Art School of my village.
After high school, I studied a degree of two years of Illustration at the "Llotja School of Arts and Design" in Barcelona. In 2017, I graduated from Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, with an exchange scholarship in MassArt (Massachusetts College of Art and Design), Boston.
Regarding jewelry, I have been self-taught until this last year, when traveling to Chile I worked as an apprentice with a family of goldsmiths who taught me the traditional techniques.
Now, upon returning to my country, I’ve got the "Martí i Durán" grant with which I am currently attending a course of contemporary jewelry at the "El Taller" school in Barcelona.
This September I’ve started the Jewelry degree in the School of Arts and Design of Barcelona, “La Massana”.
PHOEBE SCOTT
Bloomington, Indiana
You’re a new addition to the crayon box: which color are you, and why?
Color is my biggest struggling point in my work. I always get overwhelmed by it and how complete it is. I think I would be a clear like an epoxy but with a matte surface.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
The best advice I’ve been given was to channel my anxiety into my work, and let making be an outlet for it.
What is your favorite part of the artistic process?
I think you have to like at least 70% of the process of whatever piece you’re making otherwise you’ll go crazy. For me the last 20% is the hardest. Once the piece has dried out and been fired then you have to think about color and finish. I start to get antsy to start a new piece. I love the part right before you get to the fine details where everything is close to being totally fleshed out, and you just have to add the final pazazz.
What did your path to art look like? I was lucky to have a number of really great art teachers. I also had lots of anxiety as a kid, and one of my therapist suggested staying busy with after-school activities that would keep me distracted from my anxiety. So I played soccer and made art almost every day after school. I went to a charter school for high school with an arts focus. That’s where I decided to go to college for art and pursue it as a career.
JOE GALLAGHER
Brooklyn, New York
You’re a new addition to the crayon box: which color are you, and why?
Northwest Blue - a combination of where I’m from and my favorite color.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
To not change my style for anyone. Trust your process and to keep making art as much as possible.
What is your favorite part of the artistic process?
Completing a painting is always my favorite part. It always feels like a relief that I can change my focus on a brand new project.
What did your path to art look like? My path to art was on and off throughout my life. I always made drawings on the side growing up, but didn’t take it seriously until I went to college and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. At the time, I was going to business school and wasn’t passionate about it. After a while I realized that art was my life’s true calling and began teaching myself how to paint.
RACHEL COLLINS DESIGNS
Lexington, Massachusetts
You’re a new addition to the crayon box: which color are you, and why?
Calming Lilac. Its feminine and masculine.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
“Do what you love and money will come later” “learn to love yourself, cuz how can anyone else love you, if you can’t even love yourself.” My biggest inspiration is my grandparents, my grandfather was always told that he can’t do something or that he will never succeed. But he always proved them wrong by working hard and doing what he was passionate about. He wanted to build his own business, married the women of his dreams, build their first house with his bare hands, and had 7 children and 14 grand kids. That is why I live everyday with the words “tell me I can’t and I’ll show you I can.”
What is your favorite part of the artistic process?
The embroidery and the detailing. I love painting a story on my clothing and I am the most at peace with myself when I’m embroidering. Because I try so many things to calm my anxiety and panic attacks but embroidery is the closest I can to a cure.
What did your path to art look like? When I was young I loved “That So Raven” and how she would come up with these crazy outfits. I then started dressing like her and wanted to be like her. And so my love for fashion grew along with my sense of style. I started drawing and designing at 4 years old. I would draw the clothing and I would have my mom make the clothes because I was too young to use a sewing machine. The next day I would wear my design to school, once I was eight years old my Mom then started teaching me how to sew. I learned how to read patterns that I bought at the fabric store and then taught myself how to hand sew. My mom would also let me take art classes after school, but only if I got good grades. I then went to a technical high school where I learned commercial and computer design. Not only did my hand drawing skills grow but I was able to learn how to advertise through graphic design. I then did my senior project on the history of fashion design while I was applying for fashion design colleges and somehow made time to make all my prom dresses. Once I got into college for fashion design I was able to build more of my fashion design and art skills even further. I then fell back in love with hand sewing and had my first couture class. Where I learned hand beading and my new