Hayley Nolte

ABOUT

Hayley Nolte & Scot Ray have been collaborators in life and art for 27 years and the alchemy of trash transformation has been an abiding philosophy throughout.  Mining everyday discarded artifacts for their buried, extra-ordinary value generates a sense of discovery, purpose, and meaning that intrigues and sustains them. Their rambling art fair travels enable them to scour dusty corners of obscure shops in tiny towns searching for odd tins and dented cans to haul back to their studio in Philipsburg, Montana for disassembly.  This intriguing variety of post consumer litho (aka. cookie) tins forms their palette. The hills surrounding the old mining town, in which they homestead, also provide a steady supply of rusty cans that they harvest with regularity. They deconstruct and flatten these obsolete, unloved containers and then, after meticulous handcutting, layer the liberated shards with reclaimed roofing metals and distressed copper, hammering them with tiny nails to a wooden base to create functional art mirrors and wall racks. And after 15 years of saving every fragment remaining from their 2D process Hayley is intrigued to also be exploring the design challenges of reworking their tin remnants in the realm of eco-minimalist jewelry design. They are in constant play with their salvaged metal, searching for the most expressive ways to exploit its unique properties, overcome its limitations and eliminate waste…trash is purely a failure of the imagination.