Jodi Hays

JODI HAYS (b. 1976) is a USA, Tennessee-based artist whose work explores the material vocabularies of painting and piecing. Her work has been published in New American Painting and Hyperallergic, and positively mentioned in the New York Times, ArtForum International, Two Coats of Paint, and many others. Residencies include Yaddo, the Cooper Union, Stoveworks, National Parks of America, and Vermont Studio Center, and others. She has exhibited her work at galleries and museums across the United States including Corcoran Gallery of Art, Brooks Museum of Art, Wiregrass Museum of Art, Cooper Union, and Boston Center for the Arts. Her work can be found in public and private collections including The Birmingham Museum of Art, The J. Crew Group (NY), the Tennessee State Museum, and others. She is a recipient of several awards including from NYFA/Rauschenberg Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Art, Sustainable Arts Foundation, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Hopper Prize (finalist), the Howard Foundation (semifinalist), and Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Fellowship. She has had solo exhibitions at Night Gallery (LA), Red Arrow Gallery and David Lusk Gallery (both in Tennessee), and two-person shows at Susan Inglett Gallery (NY) and Devening Projects in Chicago. Hays studied Foundations at School of Visual Arts (SVA), and earned a BFA from The University of Tennessee (Knoxville) and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Art. She lived and worked in Boston for a number of years, moving to East Nashville in late 2005 where she maintains a studio and pop-up gallery (Dadu). She is a founding member of Coop Gallery. She works in East Nashville, TN where she lives with her three children and husband. Her current solo is at Johnson Lowe in Atlanta, Georgia.

"I build collage surfaces from bleached and dyed cardboard. I sink recycled corrugated cardboard under a dye bath to reveal rivulets of color, making visible the box’s formal structure. My use of these materials accesses a relationship to resourceful labor which encompasses the rich visual vocabulary of sewing, piecing, and abstraction. While the work evokes weathered boards, humidity, beadboard, and found patterns in textiles, it also nods to Modernist making and the history of painting. I enjoy pairing art historical language with humble materials, the high with the low, bringing together contemporary and ancient notions of shelter, protection and care."

- Jodi Hays