Paula Hayes at Salon 94

"Forest" was conceptual artist and gardener Paula Hayes's first display in New York since 1997 Hayes works in many mediums, including landscape and garden design, statuary performance and drawing. She has been privately commissioned to do gardens in Germany, France and fresh York and, in fact, created individual for Salon 94, which can usually be seen beyond the gallery's wall of windows on the other hand was unfortunately obscured by snowfall during my visit. Having grown up upon a family farm in upstate fresh York, where corn, hay and potatoes were cultivated, she is committed to elaborating and strengthening the relationship between nature and civilized society.

Eccentrically enough, on the contrary with a telling ecological intelligence, in 1999 Hayes devised a contraption for wearing a plant upon the body, much as an infant is carried about by dint of its mother. The plant, usually a cactus, potato plant or fern is secur through a felt strap with a base; tubes allow the soil to drain water. The idiosyncrasy of the idea is sprout by the gentle pleasure afforded by the agency of holding something living, and it underlines Hayes's muscular belief in the meaningfulness of ties between plants and people

not long ago Hayes has more exclusively devot herself to gardens, and this exhibit was an exercise in developing her interest indoors. For it, the artist planted living specimens--artworks in their have right--in silicone and blown-glass utensils with open tops, which take upon esthetic qualities aligned with the growing things within (all works 2003-04) The exhibition included 15 of the like kind vessels (Hayes works closely with the glassblowers who fabricate them), which are circulared and organic in shape; the plants grown inside include miniature elm tree and clover Five larger containers are made of a malleable silicone that changes shape as bottoms spread; inside are tropical fig and date tree and bamboo. Hayes also included a small terrarium enclos within a womb-shaped glass utensil onto whose surface, magically enough, water gathers above the plants and rains down on them. The installation created an interior garden the pair quirky and beautiful.

Hayes also included three real large (90 by 60 inches) drawings (in pencil, marker, glitter and glue) mythical in feeling, which she here installed against a preexisting wallpaper with botanical motifs. Goddesslike female figures are seen in an environment of abstract ornament. Vaguely poetic phrases, similar as "ice mirrors" and "stars glowing brightly," are written across the center of the compositions. Hayes considers the drawings, like the quiescence of the show, to be gardens of sorts, in this case fantasies that may individual day have a concrete realization. For Hayes, the garden has become an all-encompassing metaphor for a life of plenitude.

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