Alumni Feature: Mary Baum

Mary Baum sat on the floor of her MFA studio at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), staring at the hollow forms of stones she had built with glass. A visiting artist entered the room to critique her work. When the artist asked Baum what was going on with her sculptures and Baum realized she didn’t have an answer, she panicked.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Baum said. “[The visiting artist] obviously couldn’t tell me what to do, and no one could tell me what to do. I had no other ideas, so I decided to just remake the same pieces again but more carefully.” Baum set to work reconstructing the glass cases until she was satisfied with the quality. When the same visiting artist saw the improvements one month later, she exclaimed, “These are amazing!”

“[Those pieces I made] birthed this entire series I’ve been working on, and that’s been really exciting,” Baum said. “It’s allowed me to explore a lot of different ideas and materials, but I think sometimes you just have to start with what you know, and make, and keep making until something comes.”

For this reason, Baum compared the creative process to having faith. Often the only way forward is taking one step at a time until a path becomes clear. More often than not, Baum approaches a new piece by making an iteration of an already completed work. As critiques or conversations with friends spark ideas, she moves her art in new directions. “One thing always begets the other, begets the other,” Baum said, “which is why I think it’s so important to just continue to make work, trust the process, and allow the practice to lead you new places.”

The challenge of making art nearly prevented Baum from studying it in the first place. Despite her interest in art and art history, she didn’t think she would succeed as an artist. Sculpture and painting seemed particularly monumental and unapproachable. But as Baum enrolled in art classes at BYU, she said her mind was opened to what art really is. “I took a new genre class and it felt like my language,” she said. “It felt intuitive to me to focus on concepts.”

Two concepts in particular have pervaded Baum’s art over the years, stemming from experiences that stretch back into her childhood: First and foremost, her personal religious beliefs and understanding of the gospel as taught in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and second, fantasy and magic, which have captivated Baum since her mother read The Hobbit to her as a young child. Exploring belief and mysticism has led Baum to find meaning in her work. 

The first personally significant artwork Baum made was about magic and portals between worlds. As she entered graduate school, Baum began to incorporate more spirituality into her art. Her work was still about portals, but with a new perspective: Could prayer be a type of portal, connecting believers to heaven? What about relics and other physical objects that are considered evidence of God’s divine power?

Baum’s current series about stones expands on this idea. Over the course of several years, she has collected rocks and gradually integrated them into her art. “Rocks are a significant example of God’s power for me,” she said. “They were there since the beginning when God created the earth and are something I can now hold in my hand that can connect me with something beyond myself.”

Although Baum’s artistic motivations are largely spiritual, she welcomes diverse interpretations of her work. “I’m happy to have my work be more ambiguous as well,” she said. “Maybe we believe these things connect us to God but they don’t.” Since graduating with her MFA in 2017, Baum has worked as an admissions counselor at MICA. Benefits of the job include access to visiting artist lectures and fabrication spaces on campus. Staying in Baltimore means maintaining relationships with fellow graduates who also chose to stay, including a former classmate with whom Baum now shares a studio at a prominent gallery.

During the year following graduation, Baum participated in seven exhibitions, including a solo show at Arlington Art Center in Virginia, and a site-specific exhibition in Massachusetts that included a piece from her series, Point of Entry II. “That was really exciting to see how the work can exist outside of the white cube of the gallery,” Baum said.

Through the years, Baum said, her work has grown more diverse as she experiments with various mediums. Past work includes installations, photographs, sculptures and, most recently, sound. She hopes to continue making installations that incorporate sound as she gains access to increased work space and equipment. Reflecting on her growth as an artist, Baum noted, “My work is ever expanding and bringing in new aspects of different technologies and techniques.”

Artist Statement

“The world is not the world as manifest to humans; to think a reality beyond our thinking is not nonsense, but obligatory.” -Graham Harman My work points to a reality beyond our thinking. It often deals with the idea of portals—liminal entities that float between two worlds. They function as thresholds, neither fully in one world nor the other, but provide a pathway between. Reflections and the recreation of images and objects act as a metaphor for these portals. Objects can also be portals. By combining natural materials with human-made objects I create juxtapositions that resonate beyond each individual element’s meaning. These reflections and objects become an entry point to this world beyond natural human limitations of understanding.