Mara Baldwin is an artist whose work focuses on the impossible dream of utopia and asks if a perfect life can include the imperfect feelings of failure, loneliness, and dissatisfaction. Baldwin’s multidisciplinary and research-based work uses textiles and drawings to create serial and narrative forms. She shares her time between the Hudson Valley and Ithaca, New York, where she teaches drawing at Bard College and Cornell University, respectively. Baldwin received her MFA from the California College of the Arts (2010) and her BFA from Wesleyan University (2006).She is the recipient of a 2022 New York State Council on the Arts grant and has been awarded residencies at, among others, Wassaic Project, Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency program, Ucross Foundation, Djerassi, and Saltonstall. Recent solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Herbert F. Johnson Art Museum at Cornell University; Rosefsky Gallery at Binghamton University; Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York; String Room Gallery at Wells College; Davis Gallery at Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Concepto Hudson; and Corners Gallery, Ithaca, New York. Baldwin and her partner, Sarah Hennies, run a gallery and event space during the summers called Neighbors out of their pole barn garage in Ithaca, New York.