Chuck Baird Art

This is a self portrait; see the artist signing in ASL, "art" as if it lights up when he moves. His pinky finger represents the medium like a brush or pencil and the palm is like a canvas to paint or draw on. The illumination from his chest shows that it came from his heart. Also, "heart" rhymes with "art."

Before I started this artwork, I must admit that I had almost nothing that inspired me. However, as the process took place, and I began working on the art, an amazing thing happened: ideas, thoughts and concepts began appearing in my mind. For instance, I decided to research the moon to see what it'd look like during the Winter Deaflympics. What I learned inspired me to include it in the painting. I also took a solo expedition to the Arches National Park near Moab, Utah. Like everyone else who has been to the park, I was awed by the sacred feelings of the environment and its history.  I thought of the very first people to see the arches in the park, the Ute or their ancestors. I wondered about how they perceived the arches and how they lived.  Thousands of years have created these inspiring pieces of art.
 
As a result of that trip, I made a decision. I wanted to show the land that belongs (not belonged) to the Ute first before any other image of perhaps what the Deaflympics looked like, what countries came to participate, and who would be there.  The moments that we experience at Deaflympics are a bond among all deaf people, a sacred bond – just like the Double Arch and the other wonders of Utah. I want this artwork to inspire people to look up into the universe and know that what we have in our hands cannot be taken for granted. What will become of the wonders of the universe is mystical, yet in our hands.

It was an experiment for the art’s sake. I painted the four canvases portraying the African American woman’s lip speech in the series saying “I love you” with the emphasis of I, L, V, and OO. Would they be able to read the lip in a large scale? It seems work for many.

The reprints of 3 paintings together of “I love you” are fun to hang for a company visiting your house or office, you could ask them to guess what the lips say. Or reminding you of a special person who love you.

Like the series I did related to theme of Love, with Teddy Bear, Heart, and others. I asked friends of mine who still live in Overland Park, to do posing for me. I wanted to paint a couple like that with one to sign for love. They models were hard of hearing Jim Jones and his wife, Cindy.

Back when I was in San Diego working for DawnSignPress, I always wanted to do painting series related to sign for love. I picked S.D. native Cindi Safford to pose for me taking picture for one of the days I’d paint her signing love while embracing the Teddy Bear that she has for her son. Some 8 years later, I finally came to finish the project. It is still one my favorite paintings all time.

Some who know Cindi told me they could identify her with her hands, neck and chin that really surprised me. It is like when the hearing picks up the phone and hears the voice, could identify who that person is. We deaf people could for by seeing the hands and how they sign with them. We have developed super senses in our eyes for those things.

It is an excerpt from the assemblage portrait of late Frederick Schreiber, the most well liked influencing leader served the National Association of the Deaf as executive secretary for almost entire 2 decades. He touched many of our lives. He led many social changes such as our human right and the improvement of the Deaf Education and Leadership.
 
It was painted it with the oil stick from the model for Fred’s hands that sign ‘support’ with the essence of Fred. Knowing him from meeting him a couple of times in 70's, I could feel him still around asking us to continue supporting for the better quality of life for the Deaf People.

I have seen and admired many works by the German surrealist, M.C. Escher. So I decided to repeat one of his works in a "tongue-in-cheek" manner by adapting it into the handshape in American Sign Language for 'drawing' from Escher's own hands with his actual ink pen. So, in a sense, if Escher were deaf like me, he would have drawn this way. You can see it by going to M.C. Escher's Drawing Hands at M.C. Escher's Web site. It was done in 1948, the year after I was born.

In 1997, Rochester School for the Deaf invited me to stay there as an artist-in-residence for 2 weeks working with 22 different classes to make mural like on the upper wall in the lobby to their auditorium with foam pieces in hand shapes of their favorite object or theme.
One particular class, one of my favorites, was with special needs of high school age, they picked the Rochester Waterfall, not far from the school based on the same river. They posed together as one class creating their 20 hands like water, started from the top even like the river before they fall over, posed for me to take photo for cutting and painting them the color of aqua with highlights for whirling effects. Regardless, some of hands little deformed but still moving gracefully like natural waterfall.

I saw this sunset from a barbeque place on Bee Cave Road in Austin, Texas. First, I painted it and gave to my former girlfriend's mother. Years later, she asked me if I wanted it back since she'd moved into new place and there was no room for it. I then created new pieces of wood cut to represent arms signing sunset and attached them to the original. This is why it has two signatures and dates, 1978 and 2002. With 24 years of evolution in my style, I never thought of it at the time as I would today.

As part of the flowers series, I picked the water lily already bloomed in the dusk, just about to close up for the night. At the moment, you can feel some whimsy going on like fairy tales. The pollens as you can see are illuminated like the firebugs. The hands are there posed in classifier (term using in linguistic as we describe the shapes and movement of an object) like the petals are housing around the pollens as the day turns into the night, the pollens becoming nymphs inside are ready for the ball dance.

A deaf man from Chicago and his fiancée, from Toronto, commissioned me to paint their hands as the flags of their respective countries. The background is a satellite view of the Great Lakes region, and the hands connected right at the border, amid the lakes.

The connection also indicates a truth about the deaf folks who for two centuries have lived in two different countries but use the same sign language (except in Quebec). The background doesn’t show any border, which allows the two to bond, as could be true for anywhere.