Deaf Arts Festival

In Memory of Charles (Chuck) Baird
1947-2012

Chuck Baird had been a great influence to the Deaf community as an artist, actor, and a role model. He was a well-known artist who was known all over the world to the Deaf. He was an icon to our young Deaf children and adults, many of whom will follow in his footsteps as our future artists.

In the late 1990’s, he was invited to come out to Holley Family Village at the De Sales Center in Brooklyn, Michigan as their guest artist to do a workshop for the Deaf children. He brought his skills as a painter and shared his talents with our young students who came from Michigan and across the United States. One workshop turned into numerous events. It was an honor to have him stay one summer as an artist in residence where he continued to develop more of his precious art that can still be seen today at the Holley Family Village.

Mr. Baird was an honorary board member to our local organization, Deaf Arts Festival, right from the beginning of its journey. He attended all five of the festivals, even when he was ill back in September, 2011. At one of the festivals, he was a speaker for the De’VIA, a program where he explained about the Deaf culture in the art world.

Since February 10, 2012, the Deaf community continued to remember Mr. Baird as a friend, mentor, sponsor and a teacher whom we all will never forget.
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Hi, my name is Nancy Rourke. I am a Deaf artist. I was born and raised in San Diego, California; my parents did not know I was Deaf at birth until I was six years old. Doctor said I had learning disability and speech impairment. Not so.

I started drawing and painting at the age seven as a way of communicating with my family. I was always drawing and painting. I exhibited my artwork from painting rocks to canvases at art fairs, art contests and galleries. I went to art school to study graphic design and painting at National Technical Institute of the Deaf and at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. I attained a Master of Fine Arts in Computer Graphic Design/Painting.

I had my very first Deaf Artists Show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC in 1979. I became one of the Twelve Deaf Artists at Heart, Eye, Hand exhibit at the Ankrum Gallery in Los Angeles, California. After the Ankrum show, I stopped painting and worked as a graphic designer for Xerox in San Diego, California. Later, I became a palette designer for the 20th Century Fox, and created color palettes to colorize classic black & white films: Casablanca, King Kong, Sherlock Holmes, and many of the John Wayne films. Two years later, I quit my filming job and moved to Seattle, Washington. I was a graphic designer for five years at Microsoft Corporation, designing icons for Windows. Suddenly, I got laid off. I moved to Denver, Colorado and became a full time artist. That means coming back to painting after sixteen years since the Ankrum show. I won second place in the oil painting category, at the Northern Colorado Regional Juried Show. I paint every day. I travel and do exhibits across the country. The paintings from 2001 to 2009 were done in portraits, landscaping, cityscaping, still life, etc. before I got involved in Deaf Art. This is where I found exactly what I wanted to do.

In 2010, I received my first Puffin Foundation Grant for my painting project, studying on Deafhood, Deaf Culture, Audism, Deaf History, Deaf Politics, ASL and Bilingualism.

I am a prolific artist. Every week new paintings come in the website: www.nancyrourke.com