Paula Hayes

For her living artworks, Hayes works with horticultural professionals within the gallery or museum, or in the case of private collections, the collectors themselves at times, to help maintain the living artworks. A major theme in Hayes’ work is the connection of people to the natural environment, and much of her work is about the evolving relationship to growing and maintaining large and small-scale ecosystems. She considers the co-collaboration with the caregiver/curator an elemental aspect of her living artwork; she created an “Agreement for A Living Artwork” to ensure that the owner is committed to caring for the work. Other works invite tactile ongoing engagement that is not in the control of the artist over time.

Hayes lived on a farm as a teenager in Upstate New York. She received a MFA from Parsons The New School For Design in New York City in 1989 and a BS from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1987. While studying at Parsons, she started a gardening business.  In the early nineties, Hayes began exhibiting her work in galleries throughout New York City, including Fawbush Gallery, AC Project Room, White Columns, and Andrea Rosen Gallery.

Her installation in the lobby of MoMA, Nocturne of the Limax Maximus, garnered much critical acclaim and landed her a feature on CBS Sunday Morning. She installed an oversized terrarium in the lobby of Lever House in New York City, and a solo exhibition on her work was held at the Wexner Art Center in Columbus, Ohio, where she also installed a permanent garden adjacent to the museum’s main entrance