Nancy Haynes
May, 2000
A talk at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH

       The work of Nancy Haynes is very much like how she came across in her talk--unassuming, with few and subtle qualities. She spoke in nervous, hushed tones, facing only one side of the auditorium, her head tilted to one side. Even with a microphone, she was barely audible. She began with a basic chronology of her work, describing her major influences as being the Russian constructivists, the minimalists, and conceptual artists.
      She makes wood panel constructions with uneven joining, so that, according to the introduction, the work is very much about the space hidden or incomplete. This was extremely hard to see from the slides provided--all were frontal shots that gave little concept of the depth of the pieces. Her work has gone through a progression--the early panels were flat, with relatively untextured panels--it's very easy to see the Juddesque minimalist influence. They were small, at about eight inches. Many were reminiscent of Rothko paintings, with two monochromatic panels horizontally separated. Sometimes this separation would be from the joining of two panels, while later works had the divisions made by brushstrokes as she used a more painterly approach. The size increased over time as well, so that later works were as large as seven by ten feet.
      She seemed to be concerned with the play of colors and sheen on the surface--the color of materials (particularly musical instruments) interested her, and found its way into her art in the form of goldleaf and other metallic paints. She said that her knowledge of colors, paint, and drying issues were all self-taught--perhaps many of these works were an experiment for her, a testing ground to play with what she wanted to discover.
      Meaning, for the most part, was talked around, not approached directly--more was explained about why she did what she did or what was most important to her in the introduction by Alan Crockett than in her own talk. Occasionally she'd refer to certain brushstrokes as being reminiscent of language to her, but this and other similar comments were not followed up on in depth. Her talk assumed that her audience was educated--she made a reference to Òwhat Freud saidÓ without saying what the quote was, as if the audience would know just from the context. Perhaps she assumed that the audience would also know what broader concerns were implied when she described her work in a literal manner, which she rarely deviated from. Perhaps she operated from a formalist aesthetic that didn't require any more elaboration, but it would have been nice to get a little more.

dlf
2000

In Love And Reason I Trust © 1997-2006 postdlf