Andrew Hayes
Andrew Hayes
Andrew Hayes Biography
Andrew Hayes Description
Andrew Hayes grew up in Tucson, Arizona and studied sculpture at Northern Arizona University.The desert landscape inspired much of his early sculptural work and allowed him to cultivate his style in fabricated steel.After leaving school,Andrew worked in the industrial welding trade. While living in Portland, Oregon, bouncing between welding jobs and creating his own work he was invited to the EMMA collaboration. This one-week experience was liberating for Andrew and he was encouraged by his fellow collaborators to apply to the Core Fellowship at Penland School of Crafts. During his time as a Core Fellow, Andrew was able to explore a variety of materials and techniques. Surprisingly, the book became a big part of this exploration. In this work he faces the challenge of marrying the rigid qualities of metal with the delicacy of the book page.
His work has been embraced by collectors and he has been included in exhibitions and collections at Yale University, Hartford University, the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey and the Mesa Contemporary Art Museum in Mesa, Arizona to name a few. His September exhibition in the gallery was a resounding success garnering critical review and many new collectors.
Andrew Hayes Statement
Andrew Hayes: Artist Statement
Book paper and steel are perceived differently and placed in different contexts in our lives. Unbound blocks of text lose their original meaning when I cut the pages from their bindings. This allows me to respond to the shape and texture of the paper and give it a new formal context. Introducing metal to the composition allows me to create a new structure and support for the loose pages, and elevates the steel — a familiar material in industry and architecture — to the level of the book — an object for contemplation.
Alongside the paper, the steel becomes graceful, its subtle colors and surface heightened. Bound together, the pages and steel become something new and unified. No longer do the pages form a book on a shelf; with the steel, they become a unique object with its own strength and story.
I strive to overcome the disparate perceptions of the materials and level the playing field between them by combining them in constructions in which they complement each other and play equally important roles. This results in what I hope are formally and aesthetically intriguing objects but also in an awareness of how seeming opposites can work together, in this case by exploring and exploiting unexpected features that they share, such as flexibility, history, mass and density. The process and results will, I hope, do what art is supposed to do: make us think, challenge preconceived notions and see new and surprising possibilities.
The book is a seductive object to hold and smell and run your fingers through. I am drawn to books for many reasons; however, the content of the book does not enter my work. The pages allow me to achieve a form, surface, and texture that are appealing to me. The book as an object is full of fact and story. I take my sensory appreciation for the book as a material and employ the use of metal to create a new form, and hopefully a new story.
Andrew Hayes Resumé