Image courtesy of Susan Inglett Gallery
images courtesy of Night Gallery and Marten Elder
Jodi Hays employs aspects of our basest, most ancient, human nature in her paintings. She is part hunter-gatherer, part sorceress, part carpenter, part seamstress; resourceful and recalcitrant, the careworn, warrior mother assembling enough material to blanket her family. Upcycled ephemeral material from fabric fragments, long buried cardboard found in thrift store frames, disassembled packing materials are dyed and reconfigured into, at times, vast tapestries of abstraction as ancestor worship, others act as snapshots of a garden stroll or the formal portrait of a grandmother’s cherished old country doily. Logos, text and printed blandishments are obfuscated and highlighted, revealing Hays’ concrete, poetic underpinnings. And poetry does inform these works (there does not appear to be a line written by fellow Arkansan C.D. Wright that hasn’t inspired her,) the poetry of her Arkansas homeland. And her work reflects the strength of this connection, like long-weathered denim, an old farmer’s glove or the welcome mat of home’s darkened doorway, these old scraps of paper resonate with anachronistic vigor, like hidden gifts long forgotten, and Hays is as concerned with the box as what’s inside. -Scott Zieher, August 2021