Lost in the Right Direction, 2026
Rebecca Baird and Kenny Alvin Baird

Lost in the Right Direction

Onsite Gallery presents a newly commissioned mural by siblings, Rebecca Baird and Kenny Alvin Baird.

199 Richmond Street West Onsite Gallery Exterior Street-Level Mural - 199 Richmond St W.

Lost in the Right Direction (2026) explores how learning to listen to subtle movements such as the wind caressing our skin, memories held by trees, and our ancestors’ stories can guide us to where we didn’t know we needed to be.

Rebecca Baird writes,

“This new collaborative work explores how being lost can be a creative—necessary—state.

To be lost is to loosen the grip of imposed directions, of systems never designed with us in mind. 

In that opening, attention sharpens. We listen differently: to land, to memory, to instinct, to ancestors, and to what is emerging rather than what is expected. 

Orientation comes through relationship—through water, wind, stars, stories, kinship, and repeated return.

From this perspective, being lost is not the absence of knowledge, but a threshold of remembering.”

The themes of the mural represent Rebecca and Kenny’s mixed Cree Métis, Scottish and German heritage and lived experience. In traditional Cree stories, crows are often trickers, teachers and keen observers that fly between realms. Kenny has a sassy smile when he reveals that he gave one of the crows a pearl in its beak to represent Rebecca’s pearls of wisdom.

About the Artists

Rebecca Baird 

Born 1954, Edmonton, Alberta 

First Nations Affiliation: Status Cree Métis, Michel Callihoo Nation Society 

As a Cree Métis (Scot/German) artist, my practice engages Indigenous histories, identity, and cultural memory through installation, sculpture, Super 8 film, painting, printmaking, and animation.

Working with materials such as sweetgrass, porcupine quills, and glass seed beads, I draw upon Indigenous knowledge systems and material traditions while engaging contemporary visual language. Through these layered processes, inherited forms become expressions of cultural continuity, relational knowledge, and self-determination. 

Over several decades my work has been exhibited widely across Canada and internationally, with pieces held in significant public and private collections. Early landmark exhibitions include From Sea to Shining Sea at The Power Plant (1987) and the groundbreaking exhibition INDIGENA: Perspectives of Indigenous Peoples of 500 Years (1992–1995) at the former Museum of Civilization, developed in collaboration with my sibling, artist Kenny Baird. Projects such as Cree Star Blanket (2014) and Looking Hawk and the Buffalo Nation (2016) continue this work across moving images. In 2022, the Museum of Toronto presented Punk, Creed & Cree Métis, a recording and walking tour of Queen Street West narrated by Kenny and myself, reflecting on our formative artistic experiences within Toronto’s late-1970s and early ‘80s cultural landscape. 

Public artworks—The Great Mystery (1996), All My Relations (2018), Star Blanket (2019), North Star (2022), and The First Treaty Was Between the Earth and the Sky (2023)—and recent commissions for South Niagara Hospital (2024) and the George Street Revitalization Project (2025) continue to explore relationships between land, community, and collective experience. 

Kenny Alvin Baird  

Born 1956, Kirkland Lake, Ontario

First Nations Affiliation: Status Cree Métis, Michel Callihoo Nation Society 

Kenny Baird is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose work spans illustration, costume, set, interior design, and film art direction. Together with his sister, artist Rebecca Baird, he shares a history of collaborative projects exhibited at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Walter Phillips Gallery, and MOCCA.

Baird’s creative practice extends to film, music, and hospitality design. He has collaborated on projects with David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Lisa Marie Presley, Nine Inch Nails, and Marilyn Manson. He was a creative director at AREA (an art installation nightclub in New York City) and designed and illustrated principal character wigs for Milos Forman’s Amadeus, earning Paul Leblanc and Dick Smith an Academy Award for best makeup in 1985. He worked with Tony King on the Rolling Stones private media rooms during two major North and South American tours. He designed Madonna’s Music record release event, created costumes for the Pee-wee’s Playhouse television series, and designed and fabricated interiors for Toronto venues including the Drake Hotel, CiRCA Nightclub, INK entertainment, the Boa Café, and Cameron Public House.

Baird has received multiple Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council awards, as well as a residency scholarship at Banff Centre for the Arts. In addition to a Juno Award and nominations for several MTV and Much Music art direction awards, he was honoured with a Hnatyshyn Foundation REVEAL Indigenous Art Award (2017). 

Onsite Gallery is Generously Supported by The Delaney Family