Paula Hayes

Carolina Nitsch is pleased to present Paula Hayes’ first exhibition with the gallery, titled Lucid Green. The installation will consist of a deluxe artist’s book, a suite of prints, related sculpture, and a sound component.

Lucid Green relies equally on image, typography and word to create a poetic 'world' in which the reader is invited to enter through various portals which the 100 page, neoprene wrapped book offers. Lucid Green is published by Carolina Nitsch in a deluxe edition of V (housed in a wall mounted, cast acrylic case, designed by the artist) and a limited edition of 45 (clothbound).

Every detail of the book contains carefully nuanced details of the experience of a place named Lucid Green; a nature sanctuary set in an unknown time in the future. That future is a type of space and time that is different than the one we are in when we read the book, we are told, by the book's main character, Jill Poet. Jill is a being from another planet name Thear, who has come to Earth after an event called The Disappearance. The book's chapters, Jill Poet, The Disappearance and Wonder, carry the reader through her realization as a spirit that evokes the ambiguity of life and our love of a dying planet.

Cabinet of Currency is a cast acrylic wall mounted sculpture, in an edition of 8, each of which has a unique set of ‘power objects’ within. The contents or ‘power objects’ have a relationship to the over decade long story of ‘Jill Poet’ that Hayes has been writing and working from as source of inspiration and poetic focus. The cabinet is a collection of objects, both created, found and gifted to the artist, that are representative of the observations of Jill Poet, a visitor to earth from another planet, that speak to the conflicts inherent in our sense of currency of exchange.

Paula Hayes (born 1958 in Concord, Massachusetts) is an American visual artist and designer who works with sculpture, drawing, installation art, botany, and landscape design. Hayes has lived and worked in New York City for over two decades and is known for her terrariums and other living artworks, as well as her large-scale public and private landscapes. A major theme in Hayes' work is the connection of people to the natural environment, and much of her work is concerned with the care that is required to grow and maintain large- and small-scale ecosystems.