Visitors to Laumeier Sculpture Park’s “The Way” Field over the past couple of months will have seen tangled branches growing from what resembles a classroom amid the trees. This is the vision of artist Hugh Hayden—one of many on display at the park this spring as part of Hayden’s American Vernacular.
On view through May 12, American Vernacular is Hayden’s first Midwest solo exhibition. It features a decade of work alongside newly commissioned pieces. Those interested in taking a deeper look at the exhibition will enjoy the monograph of the same name—the first to be published on Hayden’s work.
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Available now from The MIT Press, Hugh Hayden: American Vernacular features dozens of detailed images of the artist’s sculptures, alongside several essays and a revealing interview between Hayden and Horace Ballard, curator of American art at the Harvard Art Museums. Topics range from Black masculinity and American ideals to creating intimacy within works, but perhaps the most interesting addition comes from author Carmen Maria Machado, the noted author of Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House. Machado’s words capture the strange magic of Hayden’s work, wrapping readers in a kind of dark dream world illustrated by Hayden’s thorn-spiked doors, overgrown houses, and slanting portals.
In this monograph, Hayden’s work is not only captured—it’s enhanced. Those who enjoy the physical exhibition will surely find more to love inside this striking publication.
