Nancy Baker Cahill

Baker Cahill was born in Cambridge, MA. She received her B.A. with Honors in Art from Williams College in 1992. She launched her art career in 2007.[1]

Baker Cahill works in graphite, paint, sculpture, video, virtual reality, and augmented reality.[2][3] She is the Founder and Creative Director of the 4th Wall public art app.[4] Her work explores themes related to the human body as a site of ongoing struggle and resistance.[5][6] One series, Bullet Blossoms, involved Baker Cahill shooting her paintings with bullets.[7] Exhibition highlights include the site-specific 2019 Desert X Biennial in the Coachella Valley.[8][9] Baker Cahill generated large scale, animated drawings in AR for the Salton Sea and above the windfarms in the Coachella Valley.[10][11] She had a solo exhibition at Boston Cyberarts[12], an AR public art exhibition at the Boston Greenway, a VR public art project on the Sunset Digital Billboards[13] sponsored by Innovation Foundation, a VR/AR event at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), and an immersive solo exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.[14][15][16][17] In July 2020, Baker Cahill will launch Liberty Bell, an AR public art installation in partnership with Art Production Fund, Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, and Rockaway Artists Alliance.[18][19]

Baker Cahill is the recipient of a 2012 ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, was a 2019 nominee for the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, and received an "Impact Maker to Watch" award at LA City Hall.[20][21][22] She was the subject of a 2019 Bloomberg Media Studios "Art+Technology" short documentary.

Baker Cahill is an international public speaker. She was a featured 2018 TEDx speaker in Pasadena, CA and delivered a keynote at Games for Change in New York City, NY.[23][24][25]

In 2018, Baker Cahill founded the 4th Wall public art app with developer Drive Studios.[26][27] 4th Wall is the AR platform through which Baker Cahill exhibits her own 3D drawings as well as curates public art exhibitions in AR.[28]

The first version of the app featured Baker Cahill’s studio in 360 and a hologram of herself talking about the conceptual foundation of her work.[29] The 4th Wall app includes, “Coordinates,” a series of curated and site-specific public art exhibitions in AR.[30]

Using the 4th Wall app, Baker Cahill initiated “Coordinates," an ongoing series of collaborative, curated & geo-located thematic AR public art exhibitions.[31][32] Among the first participating Coordinates artists were artists Beatriz Cortez, Micol Hebron, Tanya Aguiñiga and Shizu Saldamando.[33][34]

She co-curated “Defining Line” along the Los Angeles River, and the city-wide “Battlegrounds” (24 artists and 30 AR artworks) including Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick in New Orleans, LA. These exhibits discussed social issues such as gentrification, immigration, and the environment.[35][36] From 2010-2012, Baker Cahill led a collaborative art project at Homeboy Industries called “Exit Wounds.” Works from this project were exhibited throughout Los Angeles as part of the Craft Contemporary (formerly CAFAM)’s “Folk Art Everywhere” program.[37]

In 2020, the Berggruen Institute announced that Baker Cahill would be one of its ten inaugural Artist Fellows in its Transformations of the Human program.[38] [39]

• State of the Art (May 17, 2018)
• Voices of VR with Kent Bye (July 2, 2019)
• Everything VR & AR (July 25, 2019)

2020: Fellow, Berggruen Institute, Santa Monica, CA

2019: Artist in Residence, Facebook, Los Angeles, CA

2019: Honoree, Fulcrum Arts Benefit, 2019

2019: Official Selection, Games for Change Immersive Arcade

2019: Nominee for Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, 2019

2019: Impact Maker to Watch 2019, Stratiscope, City Hall, Los Angeles, CA

2014: Herradura Art Competition, Los Angeles 2nd Place 2014

2012: ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation