Strong in the Broken Places
New works by Jodi Hays

@ Threesquared
427 Chestnut Street | Nashville, TN 37203
Opening Party: Feb. 10th, 6 – 9 PM

threesquared presents an exhibition of new works by Nashville-based artist Jodi Hays. Strong in the Broken Places will feature recent oil paintings and works on paper.

In this exhibition, Hays uses physical space as metaphor for psychological space. Through a deft and deliberate balance of line and form, she leverages images one might associate with marking transitions or temporal site: construction fences, festoons, and caution tape. The work’s constant thread is an inquiry into how quotidian images can explore personal circumstance and transcend themselves.  A process the artist terms “a kind of aesthetic redemption.”

“To call Hays’ paintings landscapes probably isn’t be the best way to describe them, but it’s not inaccurate. She uses images of construction fences, festoons and caution tape minus the actual landscape, which remains only through implication — kind of like a temporary map of a place that’s in transition. In the same way that blueprints stand in for a building before it’s built, but are really no more than ink on paper, Hays’ works break down a place to its bare essentials. The new paintings in her show at Threesquared, curated by Sara Estes, are just as aesthetically pleasing as the traditional Japanese woodblocks you’ll see at Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery this season, but with a distinctively contemporary sentiment.”
– Laura Hutson, “Winter Arts Preview”, Nashville Scene