Jodi Hays: The Giant Amongst Us
Jodi Hays is a giant living amongst us—not because she’s big or loud like me, but because her work is smart, expansive, and somehow keeps getting better every time you look at it. Her paintings and constructions linger in the mind like the statues from that Doctor Who episode: the ones that inch closer each time you blink or look away. You think you’ve seen them, and then suddenly, they’re there again—closer, clearer, unavoidable.
Maybe it’s because Jodi’s work holds so much within it: her Arkansasness, her Vermont College of Fine Art MFA-ness, her Momness, her coolness, her generousness. It all coexists so naturally that anyone who encounters her work feels welcomed in. That openness is contagious. It sparks something in other artists—an impulse to try a little Jodiness in their own work. And while imitation never quite reaches the source, I don’t see that as a problem. I’ve come to believe lore itself is an essential ingredient in the casserole that is Nashville’s art scene. And lore often begins when an artist is copied—what’s that old saying about theft and flattery?
But back to Jodi.
Her recent double solo exhibitions at David Lusk Gallery’s Nashville and Memphis locations made an unshakable case for her as not just a painter of remarkable sensitivity, but also a sculptor of formidable imagination. Apparently, tiny giants can do that—be great at all the things. Her work is there: present, alive, unpretentious, and hard to shake once it’s found you.
I think about Burton Callicott, another tiny giant of Tennessee art history, who began writing poetry in his nineties when painting became impossible. He even penned them in calligraphy-he co-founded the Memphis Calligraphy Society in the 1960s, after all. I can’t help but wonder what Jodi will turn toward in her nineties. Given how fluidly she already moves between modes of making, I suspect it will be something both surprising and inevitable.
But we don’t have to wait until then to appreciate her. Dive into her work now—the water is fine… art.
Her CV can stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone’s, and I don’t mean anyone in Nashville—I mean anyone. Yet she remains entirely accessible, the kind of artist who’s a DM away, or a cup of coffee at her ad hoc office in the downtown YMCA. She’s generous with her time, her advice, her encouragement. Once, on Instagram, she left a simple comment- “underrated”-on a post by Amanda Michelletto Bluin. Neither of them should be underrated, but they both are.
So go see Amanda at the next Arcade Art Crawl, and take a long, serious look at Jodi’s work if you haven’t yet–there is some currently on display at the Frist and David Lusk Gallery. But be warned—you might not be able to stop.
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mikewindy=Mikey Mitchell
Arts and Social Practice professor at Tennessee State University, an HBCU in Nashville, TN.
I am a social practice artist with a painter’s eye and a sculptor’s hand, blending folk and conceptual traditions. My work uses color and humor as resistance to the negative ramifications of living in an increasingly complicated world. My signature, mikewindy, is a love note to my wife Windy, my first name and hers, lowercase and conjoined.
