Artist Statement
The flag works show my interest in how very simple, clear images through infinite compositions and associations, can create complex relationships and metaphors.
In our culture we have societally established and accepted rituals to recognize “life changing moments” such as marriages, births and deaths, but it is in between these moments where people live their lives. These everyday mental markers acknowledge personal connections with location, memory and history. My work gives voice to these connections.
I am most engaged by working in series, in repetition. Not, however, repetition in the sense of repeating the same thing that undermines individuality, but a succession of images that heightens difference- one that allows variation. The more things close down, the more they open up--the Deleuzian notion of repetition as becoming.
The flags make mention of how we situate ourselves through our everyday thoughts and acts in the world. I consider each of these works their own party, memorial or celebration. My interest in the anticipation of or hope for a celebration is connected to my Southern Christian/Pentecostal roots, growing up with the notion that there is something better than this life, a “heaven” or “a better life a waiting, in the sky” (Will the Circle Be Unbroken).
Bio
Jodi Hays studied Foundations at School of Visual Arts and graduated from the University of Tennessee, receiving a BFA in Drawing. After undergraduate studies she moved to Boston, where she lived before earning her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Art. Her work is shown nationally and she has completed residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Cooper Union School of Art. She teaches and curates in Nashville at Tennessee State University. Her work can be viewed at The Drawing Center (NYC) or TAG Art Gallery.
