Randy Hayes: Unfamiliar Territory
June 2 – August 26, 2012
Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery
Randy Hayes is a highly regarded Seattle painter and photographer who creates mixed media works based on his travels to Europe and Asia and his ongoing relationship with the American South, especially his birthplace of Mississippi. A major exhibition of Hayes’ work, Randy Hayes: Unfamiliar Territory, will open June 2 and continue through August 26, 2012, at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.
Born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1944, Hayes spent his early childhood in the South. After graduation from high school in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1962, he attended Rhodes College and the Memphis College of Art, where he earned his BFA degree in sculpture in 1966. He moved to Seattle the same year to work as a Vista volunteer, and in the early 1970s he moved to Boston to work as a freelance painter and set designer for the PBS affiliate, WGBH. He returned to Seattle in the mid-1970s and has lived there ever since.
Organized by Director John Olbrantz, the exhibition will feature a range of works from the past 15 years, including paintings and drawings based on the artist’s travels to Italy, India, China and Mexico; his depiction of the house in Benoit, Mississippi, where the 1950s movie, Baby Doll, was filmed; his ongoing fascination with the rural South and the places of his childhood; and most recently, his exploration of the convergence of old and new in Kyoto, Japan.
As a special feature, Randy Hayes will discuss his life and career in an illustrated lecture on Friday, June 1, 2012 beginning at 5 pm in the Roger Hull Lecture Hall at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art; a member’s only preview reception will follow from 6-8 pm in the lobby and galleries downstairs. Admission to Hayes’ lecture is complimentary.
To complement Hayes’ exhibition and lecture, the Historic Elsinore Theatre will present the film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (USA, 1958) on Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 7 pm. Set on a plantation in the Mississippi Delta, the film explores relationships, mores, death, and addiction and stars Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, and Burl Ives. Admission is $5 per person. For further information, please call the Historic Elsinore Theatre at 503/375-3574 or visit www.elsinoretheatre.com.
Randy Hayes: Unfamiliar Territory has been supported in part by grants from the City of Salem’s Transient Occupancy Tax funds and the Oregon Arts Commission.
