September 2025 AIR: Lucy wood baird
“They have a quiet form of dimensionality, not quite two dimensions, not quite three, but a third thing.”
Welcome, Lucy! We’re thrilled to have you as part of the 2025 residency! To dive in, how did you first begin exploring the concept of objecthood in your art practice?
I think it comes from my background in photography. I spent so much time looking at images that I realized we don’t often think of them as objects or think about how they function as objects. Around the same time, I found my grandparents' wedding album; they had been married for seventy years at the time. It had become three-dimensional, and the images were all curved by heat and humidity. It had become this object whose meaning was derived from the content of the images but also the way it existed sculpturally in space.
So this became a major focus in my work: the objecthood of images and the interplay of image and object. I was curious about how you might understand an object differently if you experience it with documentation of itself. You can never see an object in its entirety at once, so what happens when you can? I was also interested in the viewing experience of objects; they have to be navigated by the viewer in a way images traditionally do not require.
Also, often, an image is seen as a stand-in for an object that can’t be accessed in person, so the photograph becomes a facsimile of a thing that exists in the world in a vastly different way. That disconnect was fascinating to me.
Your work often addresses the unstable nature of truth and what we perceive as real. How does this concept manifest in both the materials and forms you use?
The form of the works is most often dictated by the image. Some works use small sections of images that I cut out of magazines, so their shape is determined by how they are photographed. The images are often printed on both sides or are transparent, so they don’t really have a true front or back. They have a quiet form of dimensionality, not quite two dimensions, not quite three, but a third thing.
These printed images ultimately become the material used to build the sculptures. Through this process, the images relinquish their legibility and are engaged as duplicates, shadows, negatives, positives, and mirrors. By its nature, photography imitates another surface, light, or object, so it always has this inherent reference to what is “real.” But when the legibility of the image is removed, you know it is a document of a real thing but don’t know what that thing is; they become somewhat uncanny.
The fascinating thing about images is that they can be considered evidence of truth and reality; they legally can be used as evidence in a court case for example. Ultimately, they are fixed moments in time that tell you only about that specific moment and perspective. So, they are both “true” and biased simultaneously. That quality of images mirrors our current climate or relative truths and the image's capacity to perpetuate or debunk them. So, photography is such a rich and complex material to examine our relationship to what is true and real and what influences those determinations.
Your sculptures and installations bend space, physicality, and perception. How does your process inform the final outcome of each piece?
Space, physicality, and perception entered my work by reading about the Iight space artists and minimalists, specifically their opinion of photography in relationship to documenting their work; they had a deep aversion to photography because they were making these experiential pieces that were so much about control over the viewer's experience, and the impression and experience of the viewer, and they did not want them to be photographed. If they were photographed, they felt the medium was reductionist and flattened this experience. I took that as a challenge to create pieces that play with images' experiential nature when imposed into space. So, this thread is always in the back of my mind as I work, and I am always thinking about how the works can perform when they are placed in space.
Each work is ultimately a visual puzzle and is built through a process of trial and error. I make many small models that serve as sketches and material studies, but only a few of these ultimately become final pieces. Once the model is built, I examine it from all angles and different lighting conditions; I also often photograph it to see how photography transforms it. A lot about spatial planes in the work and temporal planes and how these stack to create the work. How does each plane complicate the piece or add a layer of information? These models stay out in my studio, and I will slowly adjust them and change them over time until they have that slippery, surreal quality. It is not a linear process, and each work functions slightly differently.
Your work is often displayed low to the ground or engages with the floor. How does this choice influence the audience’s physical or emotional interaction with the piece? What role does the piece’s placement in space play in shaping its presence and meaning?
I often show works on the floor because it enhances their objecthood. Sculptural objects are usually viewed in the center of the room and must be navigated around, looking at the work from various angles. Many of my works shift, expand, and collapse when you walk around them, requiring viewing from multiple vantages to activate them. The floor is also an unusual place and experience of viewing images, looking down on them from above with the photographic object placed directly against the built material of the floor. This placement lends itself to the trompe trompe l'oeil quality of my work, and invites the viewer to question if they are looking at an object composed of photographs.
There is also a casual quality of placing things directly on the floor without a pedestal or plinth, which invites the question of the status of work: is it being built, taken apart, or is it complete? That perception of the in-betweenness or potential liminal nature of works adds another layer to our perception of the work's veracity. Photography is a method of recording but also communication; it is a language of sorts, so this placement questions what exactly is being communicated and if we are reading the complete sentence.
What are the implications of making unstable artworks in the artworld’s gallery structure? Does this make things difficult for you when you want to sell or exhibit nonstandard photographs?
It makes things a bit more complicated, for sure. Many of the works are made of unframed inkjet print,s which are very fragile to damage and fading, that are balanced or lightly tacked with pins or glue. They are unstable and precarious, two qualities that often stand in opposition to financial value. Because of that, I have mainly shown at non-profit art centers and artist-run spaces that are less concerned with selling the work and find their unstable nature an interesting element of the show. Ultimately, the anxiety around their precarity further alludes to the instability of our perception of reality and how it shifts, fades, and can be set of balance and fall apart. So, it does become a layer in the work.
When they are shown I send multiple copies of each work, and very detailed instructions and maps for how they are put together. Each work is unique sculpture is made from a material that can be infinitely produced, so if a work is damaged, it can be replaced or remade. Which is such a strange quality of photography and the printed image as a sculptural material.
If someone is interested in buying them, I will discuss the nature of the work and its likely lifespan with them. Each edition comes with three copies, so if one gets damaged or fades, it can be replaced. I have been lucky to have a few collectors who have purchased them, partly because they find their precariousness an interesting element of the work.
The printed photographic print will always remain a material in my practice, but what I am excited to work on during my time at Latitude is exploring other more stable materials to integrate into work. Inkjet printing on fabric, metals, or other substrates that bring in more permeance and will complicate the work's material presence and add a layer to their slippery nature.
Lucy Wood Baird lives and works in Chicago, IL.
Baird’s work has been included in exhibitions both nationally and internationally including Filter, Chicago, IL (2015); Aperture Foundation, New York, NY (2016); and Aviary Gallery, Boston, MA (2016), Harvey Meadows Gallery, Aspen, CO (2017), Soil Gallery, Seattle, WA (2018), Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles, CA (solo, 2022), Goldfinch Gallery, Chicago, IL (2023) and SCOTTY, Berlin, Germany (2023). Her work is included in private collections nationally. She has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, (2016, 2022) and Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, CO (2017) and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (2020) and Virginia Center for the Arts (2023). She holds a BA from Harvard University (2010) and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2016).