About

Central to Baird’s recent work is an examination of human mimicry of the natural world through photographic images of marble. Marble—a record of geologic time—operates in her practice like a photographic negative: a fragmentary index of vast temporal and material fields that remains partially opaque and resistant to full comprehension. As a finite and costly resource long imitated through fresco, ceramic, and painted fictive marble, it embodies the tension between original and copy. By constructing objects and installations from photographs of marble, Baird examines the intersection of mass production, preservation, and destruction via the photographic image. Her works imagine a near future in which natural materials survive primarily as technological reproductions, relics, or images. In this framework, the copy does not merely represent the original; it threatens to replace it, revealing how acts of documentation and imitation can quietly authorize disappearance while simulating permanence.

Baird has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at 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), Material, Chicago, IL (solo, 2025). Her work is also included in private collections nationally. She has been an artist in residence at Latitude, Chicago, IL, (2025), Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, (2016, 2022), Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, CO (2017, 2026), Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (2020), Virginia Center for the Arts (2023), and Monson Arts, Abbott Watts Residency, Monson ME (2024). She holds a BA from Harvard University (2010) and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2016), and lives and works in Chicago, IL.