The Hayfield Art Gallery is the creation of EveNSteve, the husband and wife team of author Eve O. Schaub and artist Stephen Schaub.
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 gift to our friends, neighbors, and community.” Over time the installation grew to encompass five monumental outdoor artworks in the field.
“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.”
Over time the concept has grown to encompass annual exhibitions that remain in place for a calendar year. The artworks are 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.
The Dollhouse Family and the Black Strawberry was the show installed for 2021- 2022. 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.
This year’s exhibit is entitled An Echo of Affection; it takes as its subject the sacred spaces of the covered bridges of Vermont, and the peculiar mythologies of place. An Echo of Affection will be up through the Spring of 2023.
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’s outdoor art gallery is free and open to the public, open dawn till dusk; it is located at 671 River Road in Pawlet Vermont. An Echo of Affection will be on display until Spring of 2023. For more information call 802-287-0287.
