Landscape recalls you into a mindful mode of stillness, solitude, and silence, where you can truly receive time. – John O’Donohue
Rachel Hayes creates vibrant large-scale textile installations that respond to their natural and built environments. She often repurposes pieces of nylon and cotton from previous works and arranges them into grid-like compositions reminiscent of Modern abstract styles and American quilt-making traditions. By blurring craft, sculpture, architecture and land art, Hayes’s works complicate notions of fragility and power, and invite new ways to engage with our surroundings.
The Edge of Becoming is a new outdoor commission by Hayes installed along the hillside of Fruitlands Museum’s property in Harvard, Massachusetts, and expands upon her indoor exhibition Transcending Space. Hayes chose fabrics with bright colors that both relate to Shaker textiles found in the museum’s collection and evoke a sense of optimism sought after by the site’s Transcendentalist founders. Its title draws from theories by Irish philosopher John O’Donohue, who voiced connections between beauty and the edges of life. A threshold between the viewer and the space beyond Nashua River valley, The Edge of Becoming encourages meditative moments for reflection on oneself in connection to the world.
Rachel Hayes was born in Kansas City, Missouri and lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Fiber from the Kansas City Art Institute, and her Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2018, Hayes collaborated with the Italian fashion house Missoni, which culminated in a solo exhibition for Milan Design Week, as well as a site-specific installation at the flagship Missoni boutique on Madison Avenue in New York. She has exhibited her work at institutions including the SculptureCenter in New York City, and recently completed a site-specific installation for the 16th edition of Contemporary Istanbul, an international art fair in Turkey.
Support provided by the Coby Foundation, Ltd. For more information visit https://thetrustees.org/exhibit/rachel-hayes-the-edge-of-becoming/
