Hugh Hayden in conversation at the Nasher Sculpture Center

13 November 2024

Best known for his work in the traditions of wood carving and carpentry, Dallas-born, New York-based artist Hugh Hayden builds sculptures and installations that explore the idea of the “American Dream.” Reconstructing familiar things like Adirondack chairs, household furniture, or basketball hoops using wood and other materials, Hayden transforms these signifiers of leisure, family, and athletics into surreal and somewhat sinister objects.

For his exhibit at the Nasher, Hayden mined the memories of his upbringing in Dallas to create new sculptures that revel in themes of nostalgia, childhood, education, and religion. While these motifs reoccur throughout much of Hayden’s work, sculptures like Brush — a boar-hair-covered play- ground at the center of the gallery— and the bark-covered football uniform in the installation titled Blending In nearby, have personal resonance for the artist. They refer to Hayden’s own memories of the beloved “Kidsville” playground in the Dallas suburb of Duncanville and the years he played football at Jesuit High School.

Despite the specificity of these works and others in the exhibition, they are likewise universally recognizable symbols of youth in the collective memory of Hayden’s generation. The style of playground equipment that Brush embodies—made entirely of wood and evocative of treehouses or Medieval forts—was common in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, before it was replaced by the industrially fabricated metal and plastic equipment that characterizes most playgrounds today.

Watch in full via Nasher Sculpture Center.