The public is invited to enjoy the Hayfield Art Gallery which hosts annual exhibitions of outdoor artwork by EveNSteve. The gallery is free and open to the public, every day dawn till dusk.
The current exhibition for 2023-2024, entitled Why We Look Through Windows, encompasses five monumental works along a mown path which viewers are welcome to walk, or experience simply by driving by.
THE HISTORY
It was in May of 2020 that EveNSteve installed their first hayfield artwork entitled “My Heart is Very Big” on the land across the street from their home and art studio, as a response to the pandemic and “a gift to our friends, neighbors, and community.” Over time the installation grew to encompass five monumental outdoor artworks.
“Art helps us to make sense of the world,” Eve says. “We both felt strongly that during times of uncertainty we need art more than ever.”
The concept has grown to encompass annual exhibitions that remain in place for a calendar year. The artworks are composed of monumental film photographs taken by Stephen which are hand-painted with text written by Eve, and then attached to outdoor scaffolding to withstand the Vermont elements as best they can. They include one that reaches thirteen feet in height and another that is thirty-four feet long.
“What began as a temporary solution to reach viewers during quarantine has evolved,” Stephen explains. “Now it is an exciting and creative way to reach new audiences. It brings our art out of the gallery and into everyday life.”
The initial exhibit, Monuments to Now, was composed of five monumental works that responded to the events of 2020, including the varied emotions of a worldwide pandemic, and a reckoning with profound racial injustice.
This was followed by the 2021-2022 exhibition The Dollhouse Family and the Black Strawberry. It asked viewers to consider the relationship of play to art as well as the normalization of pandemic life via themes of confinement, transformation and revelation.
An Echo of Affection was the exhibition from 2022-2023 and took as its subject the sacred spaces of the covered bridges of Vermont, and the peculiar mythologies of place.
Since opening, the Hayfield Art Gallery has been the subject of news stories on NBC Boston News at Ten, New England Cable News, WTEN Albany ABC, WCAX Burlington CBS, and articles in Seven Days, the Rutland Herald, and the Times Argus.
EveNSteve has also shown outdoor artworks on the front lawn of the Bennington Museum and by the historic North Bennington train station as part of the annual North Bennington Outdoor Sculpture Show.
The Hayfield Art Gallery is located at 671 River Road in Pawlet Vermont. For more information see our contact page.
