We recently connected with Mary Baum and have shared our conversation below.

Mary, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

In 2022 I moved out of my studio in a vibrant art community and relocated to a new state. At the same time, my son was diagnosed with a rare and profound disability and I became a full time caregiver to him. My day to day quickly shifted from teaching and talking about art on a daily basis with students and other artists, to immersing myself in therapies for my child and attempting to evolve myself into a new person capable of being the mother/therapist/advocate that I knew he needed. I went from being very involved in the artworld to being so far outside of it that many days I hardly felt like an artist at all. My work needed to be more pertinent to my everyday experiences with child care and child development, I needed to be able to do it from my home, to pick it up and put it down at a moment’s notice, and it needed to be safe for my child to be around. Working with fibers and quilting became the natural choice. The act of creating has now become an act of survival and connection to a part of myself that felt, at times, all but gone. The first year and a half after diagnosis were very dark, and I began to quilt by myself in my home studio, not sure of what I was making. I moved through the grief and the difficulty and began to make improv quilts with bright, bold colors, often looking to the quilters of Gees Bend for inspiration. The act of creating became an act of play. When I was with my son I felt like every moment, every interaction had to be therapeutically beneficial. So in my art practice I needed a space where my mind could relax, and where everything didn’t matter so much. As more time passed and I had another child I emerged out of the deep darkness and I came back to myself. I experienced a renewal, a rebirth of sorts, both creatively and personally. I discovered an inner strength and confidence that I didn’t know I had. I learned to put some of the worry and anxiety that I carried for my son down, and I dove even deeper into my work with textiles. I began to create work that I felt so much more connected to than anything I had previously made. I found the beauty of balance by finding a medium that fit perfectly into my life as a mother and caregiver to two busy children.

Mary, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started to consider studying art in 2009 when I was on a break from college. I really wanted to pursue it, but I also didn’t think that I was A: Good Enough or B: that it was a practical path to choose. So I decided to apply to both the art education major and to the art program. To my surprise, I was accepted to both! I chose to do pursue art while also getting my art education teaching credential. Then I decided to apply to the BFA program which again, to my surprise, I was accepted to. As I invested more and more of myself into my art practice I found so much joy and enjoyment (which was a stark contrast to any of the general ed classes I had taken before starting the program). While I was in my last year of college I decided (even though it was scary and a huge leap) that I wanted to pursue an MFA, I applied all over, but was not accepted. That year I taught art at a small private school and shared a studio with a friend. Teaching art confirmed to me that I was not meant to be a high school art teacher, but that I really did want to focus my time energy and efforts on making art myself. So I applied to grad schools again and was accepted to the Maryland Institute College of Art. I did my MFA from 2015-2017 and in so many ways it was a dream (though an insanely expensive one). I loved being in my studio and making art/talking art/critiquing art almost 24/7. After graduation I was able to work at the college and use the resources there, being a freshly minted MFA it was amazing to be able to continue to percolate in those creative waters surrounded by so many other artists at varying stages of their career. I got a studio with friends and loved continuing to develop my practice and grow.

Covid hit and in 2020 we moved to Utah to be close to family while I had my first child. Being in Utah again brought me back to BYU in 2022 as a Visiting Artist for a semester. Teaching at my alma mater was a DREAM. It was so amazing to be colleagues with my former professors and to be able to teach students and to have access again to the resources of the university. This is where things changed for my practice. Soon after completing my semester teaching we received a life-altering diagnosis of a significant disability called Phelan McDermid Syndrome, for my son, who at the time was 20 months old, and we moved to California. I became a full time stay at home mom and therapist for my son and at the time I felt I lost all connection to the art world, to myself as an artist and to whatever “career path” I thought I might have been on. I am so grateful I was able to be with my son at that time, but it was deeply difficult. The wood creatures that I had been working on before felt so far away from me, both conceptually, mentally and practically (no wood shop to work in). I felt zero desire to make something that was esoteric or heavily conceptual. Instead I wanted to make something that could bring comfort, something that could be used, and something that I could make with ease in my spare bedroom. That is when I started to make quilts. I sewed quietly in my studio with only my husband to witness and give feedback on what I was making. The making itself gave me a place to play, to be loose with my decisions and to not feel like every little thing I did was going to have long term ramifications (which is exactly how I felt when I was interacting with my son and trying to help him “catch up” developmentally). I wasn’t sure what this new growing body of quilted works meant to me as a contemporary artist, and I wasn’t sure how to talk about it. Then in the fall of 2023 The Women’s Exponent II Magazine reached out to me and asked me to submit artwork for their Issue titled “Celebrate the Everyday,” I warned them that my work had drastically changed, but I felt that it was so inline with what they were exploring in the issue. They included my art work (an image of the quilt that I made for my second child) and that inclusion helped me to have the courage to share what I was making more.

Since that time I have been embracing this new body of work more and more. It has been a process to understand what I am making and why, and the excitement and newness of the medium is constantly pulling me in so many directions, but it has been my richest season of creation yet. I think it lies in being 10+ years into my art practice and also finding a medium that fits so well into my life and one that I love so deeply. Quilting is a beautiful tradition that connects people across so so many divides in a way that few other mediums do. I am allowing myself to make what I want to make. To make contemporary fiber work, AND ALSO to create quilts for babies, christmas stockings for families and quilted letter- based art for kids. I am just starting to navigate how to move through and separate these two branches of my creative practice, but I refuse to be forced into one channel or the other as long as I want to do both.

On instagram @mary.baum you can follow my contemporary practice and the painted floral-based fabric pieces I am working on. I am always accepting commissions for this body of work! And over @baumhausco you can follow my more straight-forward quilting and sewing practice, where I am accepting commissions for quilted alphabet letters, custom Christmas stockings, quilts, and literally anything else I can dream up!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Ive already spoken about this in length. But I would say that moving to CA and losing access to resources I had before AND being so mentally and emotionally reduced from my son’s diagnosis forced me to find a new medium that could work for my life. That pivot has led me to so much joy and to deepen my practice in a way that has been incredibly enriching and has led me to making work that I feel is true, is strong and is so sincere, coming straight from my heart.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I think there were LOTS of unhelpful things I learned (or that were inferred ) in my BFA and MFA. One of them being that there is a hierarchical difference between Fine Art and Craft. That craft (like quilting) doesn’t belong in the same context as Fine Art (like painting) and I could not disagree more. There are MANY reasons that this idea is so engrained into society, but I do not think it is true and I think they are both equally valid, and powerful. They are different (though I claim that a craft can exist in a Fine Art context) but one is not better than the other. AND ALSO YOU CAN DO BOTH! Choosing to go the craft route is not selling out! they both are great and you can make whatever you want!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mary-baum.com
• Instagram: @mary.baum, @baumhausco

Image Credits

Mary Baum