Draft:Hugh Hayden

Hugh Hayden (Born in Dallas, Texas, in 1983) Is a conceptual sculptor in today's art world. Raised in Texas, Hayden became interested in design through the endowed by his family's backyard gardening and landscaping projects. This inspiration provided clear direction towards pursuing his undergraduate studies at Cornell University architecture. After working in architecture for a decade Huges received his MFA from Columbia University. Hugh Hayden's practice uses the anthropomorphization of nature as a visceral prism to investigate the human predicament. Wood is Hayden's primary medium source. Among his options, he finds a close connection to discarded trunks, rare Indigenous timbers, Christmas trees, and native African sculptures. Other raw materials include the varieties of natural resources available to man. After the selection process, Hayden begins to break down, saw, sculpt, and sand the wood. Hayden’s work uses metaphors for introspection over the stasis of social dynamics and the viewer's place within an ever-shifting ecosystem. These disparate species of resources are then modified to create new composite forms that reflect their previous cultural backgrounds in conjunction with the new form to become one and bring a figurative meaning to the complex allegory. Hayden's art has been included in various exhibitions both in the United States and throughout the world.

References

Lisson Gallery. (n.d.-b). Lisson Gallery. https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/hugh-hayden Hugh Hayden: Artist Talk | Cornell AAP. (n.d.). https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/lecture/hugh-hayden-artist-talk