Looking Through a Sewn Sky: Rachel B. Hayes August 23, 2025________________July 30, 2027
Details of new works by Rachel B. Hayes.
Caught between sculpture, installation, painting and craft, Rachel Hayes’ work asks us to look in all directions.
Hayes explores new notions of the color field genre, craft and contemporary practices of landscape-based art. At first glance, her soft sculptures recall quilts and weavings or midcentury abstract paintings. But her works also engage with natural and built landscapes to create a different kind of experience. The color field canopies direct us to look skyward, to the horizon and to our feet, enveloping us with color and light. The artist invites us to move around, under and through the installation and the moving colors thrown by the changing light. In other words, the installation allows us to navigate and engage with the work in a full body experience. Hayes created this work specifically for the Georgia Museum of Art’s Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden. Her expansive abstractions mirror those of the color field painters who filled canvases edge to edge with swaths of color transcending the limitations of the picture plane. Where those paintings invite us to look out through a portal, Hayes invites us to look up, down and around. In doing so, we see how the colors meet the sky, hues subtly changing as they respond to the light and interact with the passing of time. As Hayes expands the contemporary craft field and fiber arts through her installations, she’s relied heavily on the
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