From myriad swaths of vivid, translucent material, Rachel B. Hayes conjures placing installations that rework our experiences of each inside areas and expansive pure landscapes. The Tulsa-based artist suspends large-scale patchwork compositions in areas starting from barns and greenhouses to open fields and lakes, experimenting with scale, shade, sample, mild, and motion in joyful installations.
Hayes’ works have been exhibited extensively across the U.S. and Europe, usually stretched like quilted solar sails over courtyards. Her current piece “Horizon Drift,” in collaboration with Black Dice in Denver, includes a sequence of overlapping triangular components that forged colourful shadows onto the pavement, much like “A Moment in Time” in Capri.
Often put in for only a few weeks or months, Hayes’ installations quickly merge with their environment, a nod to Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s monumentally formidable material interventions. Richly patchworked or woven, the items additionally emphasize a joyful expertise of sunshine, breeze, and time-honored American quilting practices.
Hayes all the time enjoys trying again at earlier works and in situ experiments to tell new items. “I still get so much inspiration and energy from my temporary experiments…I keep coming back to my favorite sites that I know like the back of my hand but also learn and see new things every time I visit,” she says. She usually returns to varied websites in South Dakota, Missouri, and New Mexico to doc work a number of instances. The sunshine, climate, and adjustments within the panorama all the time “read” in a different way, and she or he thinks of many of those items as a part of a “long vision” inside her observe.
Typically, Hayes’ works stay put in for some time longer, and she or he has embraced changing into one thing of a “fabric engineer.” A number of long-term tasks will possible be put in outside for at the very least 5 years, difficult the artist to pick supplies that will likely be each visually efficient and endure the weather. “It is truly exhilarating to try and find ways to make my outdoor experiments last for longer periods of time,” she says.
Mild, particularly daylight, performs a major position in Hayes’ compositions and web site choice, notably indoors the place structure and prescribed routes affect how folks transfer round and might view the work. “I am usually chasing the sun to see where it peeks through the space and plays with reflections and color-casted shadows, so it’s really important that I make the appropriate choice for the site,” she says. Whereas the artist makes use of software program like Photoshop or Procreate to compose the general sample, she primarily focuses on the physicality of the fabric and its distinctive interactions with totally different locations.
Hayes’ installations are on view in Patterned by Nature on the Chicago Botanic Backyard all through the summer season. You can even see her work in Comfortable Buildings by August 8 at Jane Lombard Gallery in New York Metropolis and Physique’s First Structure by August 10 at Ely Heart of Up to date Artwork in New Haven, Connecticut.
Her semi-permanent exhibitions may be seen on the Worldwide Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, and The Gathering Place in Tulsa. And if you end up in West Texas, Hayes’ flag is presently flown exterior Ballroom Marfa in the course of the gallery’s opening hours. Discover extra on the artist’s web site and Instagram.
You may also get pleasure from Wally Dion’s translucent quilts that honor Indigenous traditions.
