Hoss Haley

Yield
September 4 – October 30, 2015

For YIELD, Haley presented a new iteration of The Drawing Machine, a tabletop machine built by Haley that mechanically makes drawings based on the movements of people in the gallery. Activated by motion sensors, each drawing was a unique object, dependent upon the audience’s presence, size, and activity. Alongside this interactive piece, Haley showed selections from The White Series, a series of three-dimensional monumental objects made from the skins of salvaged washing machines. Finally, for the first time, Haley displayed Glacier, a 132 in. long boulder comprised of washing machines that continues his exploration, started over a decade ago, of erratic boulders. Hoss Haley: YIELD opened with a public reception for the artist on September 4, 2015, and was on view in the True F. Luck Gallery through October 31, 2015.

A sculptor working in bronze, stainless steel, concrete, and steel, Haley uses recycled discarded metal–including washing machines or scrapped cars–literally dug up from the scrap yard to create large-scale installations that generate a dialogue tied to environmentalism and throwaway culture, the value of domestic commodities, American ingenuity, and history. By building his own custom hydraulic presses to manipulate the found appliances, Haley explains, “My father is a tinkerer and I inherited that from him. For me, it’s integral to the process. I tend to work responsively to the material [and] that’s one reason I build my own machines. I feel if you treat metal with the tools available you tend to get results that are typical so by jumping in without being bound by that, but leaving the possibilities open, then it’s all discovery.”

YIELD featured an interactive artist talk which was free and open to the public, an original video documenting the artist’s studio processes, an exhibition catalog and children’s gallery guide, as well as ENGAGE Programming, which delivered hands-on, gallery-based education to senior adults from Richmond’s east end, and to children from Richmond Public Schools and other school and community groups from across the region.

A Kansas native, sculptor and educator Hoss Haley (b. 1961, Dodge, Kansas) currently lives and works in Asheville, NC. Haley has completed public art projects for the Pack Square Conservancy in Asheville, the Asheville Art Museum, the Charlotte Area Transit System, and Mecklenberg County, all in NC as well as Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas and the Linden Sculpture Park in Indianapolis, IN. During the Fall of 2015, Haley mounted his largest public project to date, a 50,000 lb. 40 foot tall sculpture comprised of steel, at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport FBO Terminal. Haley is represented by Blue Spiral 1 in Asheville, N.C.