#dontekhayes

Donté K. Hayes and Mary Laube discuss their relationships to and uses of vessels in their work, black as a color, and their interest in creating objects that are connected with their respective ancestors.

Donté K. Hayes, Flow, 2021, Ceramic stoneware (black clay body), 8 x 8 x 9 inches

Mary Laube (ML): Hello Donté, I have been really looking forward to having this conversation with you. I first came across your work when we were both published in Maake Magazine, Issue Eleven. Tanya Gayer’s curatorial statement begins with a phrase spoken often by her late mother, “Take care of each other.” She later writes, “Through the work of each selected artist featured here in Issue 11, I continue to think through such concepts of care that consider gaps in family knowledge and  memories, along with parallel struggles of human connection intertwined with decolonizing history and identity. I have found solace in the camaraderie I feel with the artists of this issue who come to terms with what they know and will never know about themselves, their families, and their communities in order to generate true empathy and protection for each other.”

Donté K. Hayes (DH): Hi Mary, Good morning. Thank you for starting the conversation. I too was struck by your work and interview in the Maake Magazine article.

The thought’s of Tanya Gayer’s curatorial statement speaks volumes to me as an artist and human being. In my work and daily life I try to create a space to create care for my surroundings and environment and initiate welcoming in times of chaos and despair.

Mary Laube, Container for the Seven Stars of the North, acrylic on panel, 20 x 20 inches, 2021

ML: I included an image of a recent painting of mine, “Container for the Seven Stars of the North,” because it has a striking resemblance to your work. In making this image I was thinking about a darkly lit museum containing a display of ancient vessels and artifacts used by our ancestors. I think about the objects in my work as vessels metaphorically speaking. They have the potential to contain both shared history and personal memories. As a ceramicist, what is your relationship to the vessel?

DH: I want the wisdom of age, knowledge of the past of the ancestors to bring transformation for the future. Working in clay I see my work although sculptural but vessels that are turned upside down. Just like the crazy upside down world we live in. However, I know nothing is new under the sun. The ancestors went through way more. So, I’m hopeful. These sculptures are vessels to the memories of my own past and present while also pulling from the cosmic memories of those who have already gone.

ML: Wow, this is really powerful- the idea of the upside down container also seems like a statement of refusal. Even in my painting, the opening of the vessel is not visible, and is therefore theoretically non-existent. I think of this as an act of “opacity” in reference to Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation.

Mary Laube, Constellation, acrylic on panel, 16 x 20 inches, 2021

DH: Yes. But this also shows the strength that is hidden inside each of us waiting to come to the surface. Just like the body we only know how strong we are through the test of time. That brings me back to the use of pattern and texture in my own work. Texture and pattern explains the past and present through the sense of touch and repetition. The memory and ritual of a repeated pattern or texture brings familiarity and confront. Patterns can open the mind and align the body to heal itself. Your piece titled, Constellation which brings a feeling of being in a safe space snuggled up in the bed. The bright patterned headboard is the grid to move my sleep patterns and thoughts away from the day's struggles but to see the light of waking up to a better day. The headboard grid pattern is the catalyst to finding oneself in idle sleep.

ML: I love that you read that in the painting. In this sense, the idea of a vessel is a container that can provide protection. The objects I paint can function as healers: they house, protect, and swaddle. I wonder if this same principle can be applied to your upside down vessels. Flow for example embodies both gravity and buoyancy. I am struck by the imagined interior of your work - it's an interior that feels hopeful, containing multitudes of potential, and as you mentioned earlier, strength that emanates from within.

DH: So true. I’m fascinated by your thoughtful comment on the interior of these sculptural vessels and what wisdom they may hold. In the process of making the work I combine coil and pinch methods of handbuilding in clay. So I’m continually manipulating the interior of the form. Each time the inside coils are being reinforced and compressed to a cohesive one clay object. While the outer shell of the forms texture and pattern imbues the strain and marks of manipulating the form over time. There is a quiet beauty in the repetitive marks becoming texture.  

When viewing your new piece, Container for the Seven Stars of the North I’m struck by the power of the pattern on the black vessel and how we view patterns on monochromatic forms and shapes. The color black is so rich and deep and can have different shades. The black vessel in your painting has a presence seen in a specific light and space, which also gives me thoughts on how ancestral wisdom doesn't care about what others think. It is here and it will still be here in the future. The zig zag pattern and the use of the black vessel in space brings me back to my own ceramic work. The zig zag pattern in your painting is transforming time and space, and life and death. We, the living, will one day be future ancestors. That will navigate and find new stars to explore.

ML: Beautifully said.  I’m struck by how often we over generalize color on a day-to-day basis. In my paintings, black is incredibly luminous and colorful. They would have no sense of light or space without the shadows. In the pictorial world of painting there is no hierarchy between the figure and ground, and light and shadow. This substantiality of “the marginal” is so important in the work. I also love how this same interaction happens in your work- as one moves around your work the crevices carved into the clay transform. I imagine it is quite exciting to see these under the passage of the sun.

DH: Great point. You got me hyped. As your paintings bring the viewer to see everyday objects as sacred and luminus. I hope the viewer is entranced with how shadow and light hit each mark on the form of the sculpture. When discussing the ancestors' wisdom we both are using the vessel as the conduit to illuminate things unspoken or yet not understood. But yes, it is more. No longer can I see these as just objects but also sacred. We are from the diaspora and through the vessel we have opened a conduit to create new worlds.

Donté K. Hayes, Magnet, 2021, Ceramic stoneware (black clay body), 16 x 16.25 x 6.5 inches

ML: I love your idea about the longevity of ancestral wisdom. I used to think about the objects in my work as memorial objects, things that can transcend death. And also, as you said they are sacred and transformative, they are objects of displacement but also objects of renewal. I am moved by your idea that our work is about creating new worlds. In so many ways, my paintings are a way to communicate with ancestors that I have been separated from. I think of it also as a form of survival. Personally, the diaspora that I belong to is one fraught with historial, cultural and familial erasure. My work is not simply about unearthing what has been lost- its about generating something new, a restorative and healing process.

DH: Being a son of the African Diaspora, I see my work as a way to compare the construction and deconstruction of the past and present similar to the remix in hip hop music and how as black people adapt to different environments and reinvent new modes of being. My sculptures are the objects for modern rituals to initiate self care, knowledge of self, and transformation. The capacity to destroy, deconstruct, and erase history is deep. Something that binds both are work is the importance of preserving, empowering, and documenting the new traditions we create in the present. These new traditions will heal the wrongs committed in the past to guide the future. Thank you, Mary. I hope to break bread with you in person in the near future.    

ML: Thank you Donté, me as well. It has been such a pleasure speaking with you.

Donté K. Hayes graduated summa cum laude from Kennesaw State University in Georgia with a BFA in Ceramics and Printmaking with an art history minor. Hayes received his MA and MFA with honors from the University of Iowa and is the 2017 recipient of the University of Iowa Arts Fellowship. Recent art exhibitions include group shows at the Trout Museum of Art, Appleton, Wisconsin, and the 2021 Atlanta Biennial at the Atlanta Contemporary in Georgia. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas among others. Hayes is a 2019 Ceramics Monthly Magazine Emerging Artists and Artaxis Fellow. Donté is the 2019 winner of the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern art from the Gibbes Museum of Art.

www.dontekhayes.com @dontekhayes

Mary Laube (born Seoul, Korea, 1985) is Assistant Professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her MFA (2012) from The University of Iowa, and her BFA (2009) from Illinois State University. Past exhibitions include Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC), VCU Qatar (Doha), Monaco (St Louis), The Spring Break Art Show (NYC), and Coop Gallery (Nashville). Artist residencies include Yaddo, Wassaic Project,  the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Stiwdeo Maelor in Corris, Wales. Past publications include Art Maze Mag, Maake Magazine, and New American Paintings. In 2019, Mary received the Contemporary Visual Art Bronze Award from AHL Foundation. She is a co-founder of the Warp Whistle Project, a collaborative duo with composer Paul Schuette. Together, they make work that merges kinetic stage sets with music performance.