Humber Lecture: Hugh Hayden

Join contemporary artist Hugh Hayden, featured in the exhibition Fault Lines: Art and the Environment, as he discusses his work and the installation Brier Patch, currently on view in the Ann and Jim Goodnight Museum Park.

About the artist

Hugh Hayden, with both a background in architecture and studio art, combines traditional woodworking techniques with freehand carving to create sculptural installations with salvaged and found wood as his primary medium. In his words, “my work arises from a deep connection to nature and its organic materials. Little did I know that my childhood passion for gardening would sow the seeds to my becoming an artist embracing natural materials.” Hayden transforms and combines objects as varied as discarded trunks, rare indigenous timbers, Christmas trees, or souvenir African sculptures, creating new composite forms that also reflect their complex cultural backgrounds. Crafting metaphors for human existence and past experience, Hayden’s work questions the stasis of social dynamics and asks the viewer to examine their place within an ever-shifting ecosystem.

This lecture will be held both in person and virtually on Zoom. Please select an option at checkout.

Support provided by the Robert Lee Humber Lectures Endowment.

Image: Hugh Hayden (American, b. 1983), Brier Patch, 2022. Cedar and aluminum. One-hundred objects; 75 with branches, each approximately 96 — 96 — 96 inches; 25 without branches, each 36 inches — 28 inches — 27 inches. Collection the artist, courtesy Lisson Gallery. © Hugh Hayden 2022. Photograph by Yasunori Matsui/Madison Square Park Conservancy. The exhibition was organized by Madison Square Park Conservancy, New York.