Jodi Hays (b. 1976, Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas, United States of America) is a painter whose work is partly influenced by a southern/rural vernacular. Her work has been exhibited internationally including at the Wiregrass Museum, Michael Price Contemporary (Boston) and The Brooks Museum (Memphis). In addition to her work as a painter, Jodi was a founding member of COOP curatorial collective.

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Week 2

Flannery O’Connor once said that “Southern identity is not really connected with mocking birds and beaten biscuits and white columns any more than it is with hookworm and bare feet and muddy clay roads.” In a recent Nashville Scene Adia Victoria talks with Kiese Laymon (Heavy) and writes “I see her as thoroughly and completely Southern. And to expect her to be anything other than that (racist) kind of minimizes the potency of white supremacy and its ability to shape hearts and minds.”

Sunday, 16” x 12”, oil on fabric over panel, 2020, Jodi Hays

Readers and critics are reckoning with Flannery O’Connor (HIlton Als and Paul Elie, among others). I have been working through this too, related to Southern Whiteness, women, religion and racism. In 2016 Trump got 64% of the Deep Southern White Women vote. The reasons have rootedness in fear, faith, land and the persistent Lost Cause Narrative*. Some of the scallop iconography comes from ways to think about a mark, a painted gesture, and a way to stylize it. Lace, domestic textiles, the put-on “frills” of southern femininity, decoration--and the complicity of this design habit are in my thoughts as well. I am thinking about the beaten biscuits and the hookworm, the rice and the diamonds (words from CD Wright, my favorite poet ever and fellow Arkansan).

A girl’s dream, 56” x 70”, dye on calleged paper and cardboard, 2020, Jodi Hays

Beverly Buchanan wrote “I believe the entire world is descendant from shacks,” Some of my material exploration includes textiles, wood and reclaimed materials. This kind of material feels akin to “shack” more than “mansion”, which in my mind, connects to a more rural and careworn aesthetic.

Beverly Buchanan, Untitled (Double Portrait of Artist with Frustula Sculpture) "Beverly Buchanan – Ruins and Rituals" at Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn — Buchanan, Beverly. Shack Stories, Volume 1.

Yours, 10” diameter, acrylic on fabric, 2020, Jodi Hays

Reckon, 15” x 9”, oil on sized fabric, 2020, Jodi Hays

Collage sketches in studio, 10.2020, Jodi Hays

I placed this Jack Halten Fahnestock Risograph print at my front door, purchased this summer at a fundraiser for The Black School. I have really appreciated their open source reading lists. Get your own and follow and support them, yet another wonderfully important thing to come from the South (and New Orleans). Keep reckoning, get out and VOTE.

* The complicated archetype of the Southern Belle (and its patriarchal counterpart, the Southern Gentleman) inform the South and our contemporary culture through Purity Culture and patriarchy (in Evangelical circles), and monuments/symbols (Daughters of the Confederacy marry all three, land faith and ladies, actually). The Southern Poverty Law Center has a map for all confederate memorials (often funded by church people, leaders in the south).