ARTIST STATEMENT
My current works are monochrome photo intaglio prints, from original photographs by the artist. They are printed on Arches BFK Rives paper, with Charbonnel ink. The themes deal with mythology and myth-making attached to objects and locations from urban legends to Native-American and Aboriginal story-telling, with Greek, Roman, Japanese, and Norse mythology, duppies, haints, saints, heroes, sheroes, and super-heroes, in comic books, sci-fi tales, and ghost stories told around a campfire.
These prints give homage to female ways of knowing through stylized, semi-abstracted figurations depicting a potential narrative sequence. Shadows of mythical stories haunt the landscapes, alluding to creation stories. The work suggests myths and daydreams in a dreamworld of cosmic nature, evoking notions of disappearance, deconstruction, and self-effacement. The mythological world is part of being human. These prints bridge past and present, the mystical and concrete.
Mountain, refers to the strength of women, especially in dealing with all kinds of adversity, natural disasters, patriarchy, poverty, and discrimination.
Myths are always unfinished, new generations add to them, pick and choose their own heroines and find strength in their stories. We find meaning in allegories.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Carol Hayman, photographer and printmaker, lives in Austin, Texas where she is a retired Professor of Anthropology from Austin Community College. She prints at Slugfest Print Studio, where her photographs become fine art prints or photo etchings, using polymer plates, an intaglio American French Tool press handmade paper from France, Mexico, and Japan, with Charbonnel ink. She has exhibited locally, nationally (including at Woman Made Gallery), and internationally in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Japan, England, France, Spain, and Bulgaria. Her work is included in the collections of the University of Wisconsin Madison Archive, SGCI Archive at Kennesaw State University, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Mesa Contemporary Art Museum, Bradbury Art Museum, Woodlands School Art Trust, University Health System San Antonio, and the Illinois Institute of Art Chicago. She has completed residencies with the Coronado Studio Serie Print Project and with the University of Texas at Casa Herrera in Antigua, Guatemala.
© Carol Hayman