A Satyr in the Creamery

Opening

Trevor Baird’s practice is influenced by comics, movies, and other narrative mediums translated into the language of craft. Blending the crass sentimentality of DIY cultural production with the idealized perfection of industrial craft, Baird’s practice quest ions the history and functionality of the decorative arts. The Montreal-based artist uses repetition through molds and screenprinting, while retaining human touch in a personally developed practice where intervention and error is introduced and cultivated between each step. The work undermines its transparent functionality, highlighting its uneasy status and linear material progression from malleable to non-repurposable. 

Trevor Baird (b.1990 Canada) lives and works in Montreal. He has studied at NSCAD University, Halifax, and holds a BFA in Ceramics from Concordia University. His work has recently been exhibited at the Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Lansing; The Hole, New York; Projet Pangee, Montreal; Material Art Fair with Projet Pangee in 2019.

A Satyr in the Creamery

EXTERIOR: Day: grey, wet and cold. The yard of a modest dairy farm, each building covered with monochrome powder-blue corrugated aluminum siding, white accents; it visually smells. On the ground mud, shit, gravel, cement and a tiny bit of gasoline intermix. 

A Satyr (played by Daniel Day Lewis), cloven hooves, topless with hairy chest, scruffy beard, bowl-cut hair and a pan flute around his neck, stands in the rain. SATYR hears commotion though an open door across the yard, next to the door is a parked green Gator filled with old wet jackets and tools. SATYR approaches the door and peers in. 

INTERIOR: Yellow fluorescent lighting contrasts heavily with the blue/grey exterior scene. Plywood particleboard painted with white house-paint, the individual particles are still visible, almost highlighted. The white plywood walls are sprayed with feces in a rough gradient up to 3 feet high. A labyrinth of pens and chutes made from wood and aluminum fill the large room. It’s still cold inside; human and animal breath is both still visible with clouds of steam in all shots. Two men with heavy insulated canvas jackets are next to a small individual squeeze, one man sits on a bucket close to the cow (TRAINER) while the other stands over his shoulder and watches (TRAINEE). The sound of machinery and cattle is almost deafening.

TRAINER
See…. You just gotta….. grab….

TRAINER is attaching hoses to the udders of a white and black cow, explaining the process to TRAINEE standing beside him. The cow kicks but only ends up spraying mud face.

TRAINER
(Angry, Standing up)
AH! YOU LI

TRAINER wipes his eyes with his sleeve and makes eye contact with the Satyr, now standing between the men and the doorway. TRAINER looks at TRAINEE who has also spotted him.

TRAINER
(Confused, to TRAINEE)
Isn’t that Daniel Day-Lewis?