Short Biography of Chuck Baird
In 1947, as a baby boomer, he was born with moderate deaf, grown up as
culturally deaf while attended the deaf residential school in Kansas. He
went to study both at Gallaudet College and National Technical
Institute for the Deaf (NTID). After received his BFA in Rochester
Institute of Technology 1974, he spent 5 summers at the National Theatre
of the Deaf (NTD) painting their sets. During these years, he held a
variety of jobs developing his art in upstate New York and Delaware
before he joined Spectrum, the deaf art colony Texas. In 1980, he joined
the NTD for the next 10 years as an actor and did some set designs. For
the more artistic opportunities, he left the NTD to live nomadically in
California and Arizona. He has performed at some Equity theaters. He
also worked for DawnSignPress as an in-house artist, and painted a
number of first deaf-related works, culminating in the coffee table
book. He went back to Kansas City and moved again to Tucson setting up
his own painting studios. During time, he has often traveled to paint
murals or lead art workshops for deaf children at schools, summer camps,
and at art festivals. He had his works known for the genre called Deaf
View Image Art (De’VIA) in numerous art exhibits here and oversea over
last 12 years. He was summoned to Gallaudet to help coordinating the
visual arts exhibitions for Deaf Way II in 2002 and went back there
again teaching art for one semester. He now resides in Austin, Texas
continued creating arts at his studio and aboard. He has established the
visual art foundation in his name for promoting emerging deaf artists.
Please go to www.chuckbairdfoundation.org.