Mary Bailey tried to grow up in Cleveland, Ohio but fourteen-years of rote learning and obedience training at an all girls’ school made that next to impossible. She escaped to Brown University where she received a BA in Everything in an attempt to understand herself and the fascinating but contradictory world she found herself in.
After taking a painting course where she had more fun building the stretcher than painting the painting, Bailey headed down to the basement sculpture studio. Upon graduation, she worked as a product designer and, armed with a bandsaw and a few hand tools, she experimented with fiberglass, metal and cast concrete before focusing in on wood.
“I discovered my voice through drawing – doodling actually. My first studio was a drawing table and I’d draw and draw until I found an intriguing line or shape then attempt to translate it into three dimensions, building a maquette out of clay, foam or polystyrene sheet. Eventually I worked directly in wood, cutting out and shaping pieces that I combined to make lively and eccentric objects with loads of personality.”
In 1988, Bailey hit her stride with her painted wood series “Wild Life.” That same year, she rented a large studio with eleven-foot ceilings in downtown Bridgeport, CT and started working BIG! From 1990 to 1992, she created her “Totem” series, inspired by the more conservative direction our country was taking under the Reagan administration. The works embodied Bailey’s “looming concerns” including avarice (Leona), the hijacking of patriotism (Still There) and environmental issues (Organic Catastrophe).
In 1992, Bailey and her husband Toby Welles, a product designer, inventor and illustrator, moved their studios into an old barn in Redding, CT. As Bailey’s work became increasingly narrative, she received a grant from the New England Foundation of the Arts to make a short dramatic video that incorporated her sculptures into the action of the story. The fifteen-minute piece “The Surgery” tells the tragic-comic tale of a woman who undergoes surgery to remove physical objects that represent her psychological trauma. The video won the 1995 Connecticut Film and Video Competition and was screened at film festivals across the country. (To view “The Surgery” video, click here) Writing the screenplay inspired Bailey to start writing short stories. After studying with Carol Emshwiller at NYU and winning the 63rd Street Y Writer’s Voice New Voice in Fiction Award, Bailey went back to school and received an MFA in Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. (To read Bailey’s published stories that, like her sculpture, combine realism with the uncanny, go to www.mkbaileyauthor.com or click here
Since then, Bailey has been moving back and forth between writing and sculpting as opportunities and inspiration dictate. But her creativity didn’t stop there. At 41, in a last-minute miracle, Bailey gave birth to her son Henry! Her “Botanical” series started with “Impending Motherhood,” a piece she made while pregnant. “At nine-months, working at the belt-sander became increasingly challenging as my belly grew to monstrous proportions but my arms stayed the same length.”
In addition to free-standing sculpture, Bailey also makes wall-reliefs, pieces that incorporate light, and commemorative works. Her most recent project is a series of wall reliefs that combine word and image to make provocative statements about a world that continues to grow ever stranger.
Artist's Statement
I work primarily in wood, a wonderfully tactile and versatile natural material. I’ve always been fascinated by the challenge of inventing forms that have never been seen or imagined. My process involves a lot of drawing and experimentation, combining shapes that are both familiar and unfamiliar, organic and man-made, until a piece starts to exude personality and presence. I start with planed boards of basswood (mostly) that I laminate, cut, shape then assemble, and sometimes paint. I consider my creative process akin to drawing in three dimensions. Much of the sculpture I’ve made over the years has been three-dimensional freestanding work but for the last two years, I’ve been making wall-reliefs that combine word and image to more directly address the urgent problems and predicaments of our time.
My newest work, a series of hand-painted cigarette packs called “Make Smoking Great Again” illustrate the disturbing realities that the Trump regime is rapidly and recklessly bringing into being. I’ve used the cigarette pack as a canvas to depict these troubling scenarios because of the tobacco industry’s strategy of combining colorful graphics with elitist language to seduce us into consuming a product that slowly kills us.