Lucy Wood Baird What Do I call you? April 11 - May 5, 2025
Exhibition Statement:
Lucy Wood Baird uses shards of images, both found and made, as material collecting bits of the ambient image noise that surrounds us. Created across wide windows of time, these image pieces are stacked, assembled, collaged and built into quietly dimensional objects.
Through this process, the photographic shards relinquish their legibility, democratizing the subject matter as they are incorporated into sculpture either in unison or intermittently as duplicates, shadows, negatives, positives, or mirrors.
The resulting objects and installations feel as if they could be strange artifacts of a future civilization, reassembled from the disembodied recordings of our past and present. The works illuminate the incongruity of photographic identity as simultaneously record, chameleon, and messenger, tapping into the anxiety around false and relative truths emanating from the onslaught of images we encounter daily.
At the exhibition's core is an investigation into the implication of layering photographic and geologic time using photographic fictive marble and stone. Like a photographic negative, a marble fragment depicts a small fraction of a vast field of material or information cut into a neat square. Each fragment is a unique record of geologic time, alluding to a long-lost history in the language of veins and colors that is no longer legible. Baird further complicates this by treating the photographic fictive marble as a sculptural material, referencing the technique originating in Renaissance painting that mimics the appearance of marble to create an illusion of reality and three-dimensional depth.
Ultimately, the works in What do I call you? examine the slippery dimensionality of the photographic image by arranging image, mirror, plexiglass, marble, fabric, and time into composite sculptural objects. They highlight collage as a process of reorientation, an attempt to understand the world by rearranging pieces of it, and an acknowledgment that the simple act of seeing does not translate to knowing.
The title of Lucy Wood Baird’s exhibition at Material, “What Do I Call You?” sets a thoughtful tone for the viewer, prompting inquiry from the start. By framing the title as a question about itself, it invites us to explore the nature of the pieces on display, encouraging a deeper examination.
The exhibition is made up of three floor pieces—two resting on low pedestals and one directly on the floor - and two wall pieces. All of the objects appear to be made from some kind of marble or stone, but their materiality quickly reveals itself to be deceptive. At times the “marble” is transparent, gently sagging, or as thin as paper.
We realize (or remember) that Baird is making photographs. She assembles sculptural constructions from photographs of the original marble (which is often included in the piece), that she has printed on a whole variety of materials from foam core to velvet.
Each piece is crafted expertly to deceive maybe, but maybe also to become curiosities of a different sort. What makes us begin to look, is the curiosity of what they are made of. What makes us look deeper is when we wonder what they are, as art objects? What makes one a personal favorite over another, is when we create associations with them, when we consider them through the lens of our own experiences: How do I define them?
Returning to the title,”What do I call you?” We start to wonder who is the “I” in the title? Is it the viewer or the artist? Imagine the artist in her studio, where hybridization and ambiguity flow through the creative process. Baird seems to ask, “Who are you?” Do the objects we create in this way, possess agency? Is she asking the object to identify itself? By asking “What do I call you?” Or, is it the viewer who is invited to respond to this question? I circle around and examine each piece looking for the things which can help me to define it. “Bookmatch” plays at once with this material trickery. This time though, the title assists us in at least uncovering a design technique called“bookmatching” where two stone surfaces are joined to mirror each other creating a symmetrical, open book effect. Baird is using this technique to allude to moments where the mirroring looks at times like a shadow or a reflection. She doubles down on the book pun and literally places a paper-thin sheet of “marble” balancing on the top, a kind of odd roof.
As I peer down, I’m not merely observing a model; I’m drawn into an imaginative space where I am the figurine navigating these marble structures, acutely aware of the slanted weight of the walls hovering above me. This visceral experience recalls my time within a Richard Serra sculpture, where I felt the weight and mass of the material envelop me and push me through the space.
On the second low platform sits another assemblage of marble, mirror, and photographs, titled“Shapeshifter”. Unlike “Bookmatch”, I do not contemplate it’s existence in terms of architecture. Instead, as I circle around the rectangular and geometric lines intersecting with the curved pillow-like torso; I follow one straight line to another curved one, as it reclines prone against the ground. I feel the weight of the stone as it holds the transparent and light curve to a straight fold in the translucent marble which is both soft and hard and light and heavy and feminine and masculine. As I circle completely to see two folded half circles dangling in space like breasts or testicles the effect transports me to Italy as I felt when I first saw Bernini’s “Sleeping Hermaphroditus”; and experienced the delight of the “soft” fleshy pillowy marble and the delightful surprise of her masculine feature.
In this moment, I reflect on the power of Baird’s work to evoke such profound connections and questions. Each piece beckons us to engage in a dialogue, urging us to ponder not just what they are but what demands are made of us. What do we as the viewer bring to each work, and how is the artist guiding us along, as we define this thing that she has created.
-Jean Alexander Frater