Today we’d like to introduce you to Hayley Labrum Morrison.
Hi Hayley, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was born and raised in the Salt Lake City area. Drawing was always important to me as a kid, and my mom likes to remind me how excited I would get at the prospect of a fresh box of crayons. I started taking art seriously in high school and took every class available to me, including AP Art and AP Art History. I was lucky to go to college and even luckier to know exactly what I wanted to do. I earned a BFA in Studio Art from BYU in 2008. Not a great time to graduate, so it would be some time before I could fully focus on art. After working as a preschool teacher and years of building a career in recruiting, I felt ready to return to my passion and pursue art full-time. Now am at a point where I’m building community around me and making work I’m excited about. I couldn’t ask for more.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There is no clear cut path in the art world. There may be markers or goals that people deem as “success” along the road, but there is no A to B to C to follow, so I consider it more of a playground of obstacles rather than a road. Each obstacle is difficult but can be very fun and very fulfilling once conquered.
One of the more difficult tasks of being an artist is figuring out what to say “yes” to. Artists are constantly confronted with opportunities that are not worth their time and energy and often unpaid. Most, if not all, artists are not in it to make gobs of money, so it can be hard to turn down exciting jobs that aren’t paying, but I’ve noticed that working for free creates more opportunities to being taken advantage of–for oneself and for other artists. Free work also creates a culture of not taking artists seriously. I do think it can be okay to take projects that aren’t paid, but there should be skill- or community-building aspects that lend themselves to the artist’s career goals.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’d say painting is at the core of my practice–watercolor, acrylic, and oil– though I have recently been working in paper casting, papier-mâché, and video as well. My imagery often includes figures, usually women, in surreal environments composed of elements of architecture, the natural landscape, patterns, and bright colors. My roots in Mormonism inform most of my concepts, from obscure cultural elements and symbolism to universal themes of gendered power relations and spirituality. My work can be seen in Collar Works Gallery’s 2021 Flat File (through August 2022, Troy, NY and Online), “MIDWINTER at the gates of dawn” at Writ&Vision (December 2021, Provo, UT) and in upcoming solo exhibitions with Martha’s Contemporary (January 2022, Austin, TX) and Daugherty Art Center (May 2022, Austin, TX).
I’m proud of the work I’ve been doing as the cofounder of concept animals, a platform for contemporary art and creatives created in the height of the pandemic. More specifically, I’m proud of starting Crit Nites, a critique group for working artists to share their work and support each other. We just finished up “Howdy, Stranger”, a group exhibition of 38 artists that celebrated the fruits of a 3-month virtual critique group series held June-August 2021. The show was in conjunction with the Austin Studio Tours and a collaboration between concept animals, Perkins&Will’s ATX Branded Environments team, and ICOSA Collective. The coming together of strangers, the friendships built, and the massive support from the community made the show one of the highlights of my career so far. We are in the midst of an in-person series of Crit Nites that’s supported by The Contemporary ATX and open to the public. Join us for the next one on January 15!
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I’d typically say I’m pretty risk-averse–I’m an anxious creature, so the more I know about what’s going to happen and when it’s going to happen, the better for the ol’ brain. But, in the context of my art career, I have to take risks. The biggest one probably being the risk I took of quitting my full-time career that provided a steady paycheck, healthcare, and retirement savings to pursue art. I don’t think I could have done it if I didn’t feel confident that being an artist is vital to my journey to self-actualization. And now, three years later, I still feel the same about it. I take risks day-to-day as an artist, too. Smaller but still important risks. Whether it’s submitting to an opportunity I know I don’t have a chance in hell at getting or painting over a hand that took me a week to paint because I know it’s best for the piece, each risk I take leads me further on that journey. Being an artist truly is about risk-taking and experimentation. Without those two things, art-making would become stale, stagnant, irrelevant, and pointless.
Contact Info:
- Email: art@hayley.co
- Website: http://www.hayley.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hullahoop_/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hullah00p_
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/conceptanimals/
