Horizon Drift
On View: May 16—October 27, 2024
Opening Reception: May 16, 5:00 p.m.—7:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public. Outdoors and on view 24/7.
This temporary artwork is presented by the Biennial of the Americas with artistic direction by Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum.
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Additional community programs, including open hours at the on-site Black Cube shipping container, will take place every month.
July 25 @ 6:00 p.m.
Salsa in the Plaza, hosted alongside CALDAC and DJ Noslen.
August 24 @ 9:30 a.m.
Natural Light and Photography Workshop with Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC), led by Daniel Ortega Hernández.
September 26 @ 5:30 p.m.
Translucent Paper Triangle Collages with Art Students League of Denver (ASLD), led by Rhiannon Alpers. Register →
October 24 @ 5:00 p.m.
Latin Jazz in the Plaza with Mistura Fina. Register →
Horizon Drift
Rachel Hayes
Horizon Drift is a newly commissioned, textile-based public art installation by Tulsa artist Rachel Hayes. Designed specifically for the Plaza of the Americas and in response to Colorado’s colorscape, Horizon Drift will canopy the Plaza with a series of large, vibrant, and handmade textile panels that attach to and play off the space’s surrounding structures. Made from radially-oriented fabrics intentionally chosen by the artist for their durability and the ways in which their colors, opacities, and textures invoke and interact with the dynamic lighting and palette of Denver, these suspended panels will serve as windows to the city’s ever-ephemeral environmental conditions.
Hayes’ practice calls back to a rich lineage of artistic predecessors, from American quiltmakers, to Frank Stella’s abstract expressionist paintings, to Chihuly’s glass ceilings. Horizon Drift intertwines these references, adapting the traditionally feminine craft of Log Cabin quilting as the backbone for an architectural-scale, contemporary work that is as immense and compelling as it is functional. For viewers, Hayes envisions the installation as an uplifting offering that both augments and softens public space, yielding a place “where one can have a delightfully bold experience of the senses and also sit, chill out, and notice where we are in this exact moment.”
Horizon Drift is presented by the Biennial of the Americas with artistic direction by Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum.
About the artist:
Rachel Hayes was born in Independence, Missouri and lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She received her BFA in Fiber from the Kansas City Art Institute, and her MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has exhibited her work at institutions including SculptureCenter in New York City, NY; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Roswell Museum of Art, Roswell, NM; among others. Her work has been covered by The New Yorker, The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Vogue, Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, and Artforum among others.
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Made possible through generous support from the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, the City of Denver’s Downtown Denver Activation Grant, Colorado Creative Industries, the David and Laura Merage Foundation, DaVita, Metropolitan District, and Riverfront Park Community Foundation.
