Exhibition Chellis Baird | Tethered at the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum
September 7-December 19, 2021
The beauty and fluidity of movement is at the heart of Tethered, a new exhibit by Spartanburg, SC, native Chellis Baird. This New York-based artist invokes the spirit of her background in textiles and fashion as she creates sculptural paintings by deconstructing, and then reconstructing, traditional tools of canvas and paint. In addition, the exhibit incorporates themes of South Carolina history and industry as it explores and tests artistic parameters.
Born in the midst of a booming textile industry, Baird recalls playing with fabric as a child on the floor of a local textile mill. An interest in using fabric to make quilts and doll clothes in her younger years evolved into a professional interest, as she earned a BFA in textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design. In her early career, she worked with designers for Gucci and Chanel, having access to the finest fabric in the world. Baird’s interest in fabric as art led her to the Art Students League of New York, where she began experimenting with tools and craft of painting.
“I was painting in a traditional format, on either Masonite or on canvas,” said Baird, “and I started to think: ‘I have this rich background from sculpting the human body in fabric and watching the manufacturing. Why am I buying a canvas and painting on it when I have passion for the language of fabric? So I decided to literally punch through the canvas and start creating my own woven language. I began to reexamine what makes up a painting: some fabric, some paint and some wood. I started to consider how could I own these elements to create my personal artistic statement.”
Baird, whose work is heavily influenced by the color field movement and abstract impressionism, incorporates a blue theme throughout Tethered to represent both the locale’s proximity to the ocean and the industry of indigo, a key agricultural product in South Carolina history.
“Many of Baird’s monochromatic woven paintings included in Tethered are blue, which hearkens back to indigo dye,” said Liz Miller, Myrtle Beach Art Museum curator. “The ages-old natural, blue pigment was first introduced In North America by way of plantation owner Eliza Lucas in colonial South Carolina, where it became the colony’s most important cash crop after rice. In fact, Georgetown, SC, was one of the crop’s largest producers in the country.”
Baird has created one piece specifically for the Tethered exhibit in collaboration with North Myrtle Beach celebrity Vanna White. White, who has enjoyed crochet for decades, owns yarn brand Vanna’s Choice, which donated the yarn for Baird’s piece. “The Spin” is Baird’s first circular work and invokes the action central to textile manufacturing.
“I wanted to pay homage to the wheel and the gesture of spinning because so much of my work is inspired by movement and motion and gesture,” said Baird.
In addition, Baird’s lifelong interest in dance, also involving fluidity and rhythm, is expressed in Tethered through a series of six white works, all of which reference dance positions and phrases in their titles.
“Dance has been an important aspect in my artistic process because the habit of moving one’s body through space through choreography is like a puzzle to me,” said Baird. “I often find myself recollecting thoughts and reorganizing concepts through my body as I’m moving through dance.”
Miller noted that Tethered blends creativity, exploration of media, and historical significance in a way that will resonate with Grand Strand audiences.
“Just as Baird intertwines her hand-dyed and painted fabrics into their mesmerizingly beautiful compositions,” said Miller, “so too does she inherently weave our region’s history and culture into the very fabric of her work.”
The Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum is a wholly nonprofit institution located at 3100 South Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Components of Museum programs are funded in part by support from the City of Myrtle Beach and the South Carolina Arts Commission, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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