The Thousands

Any sign of intentional symmetry at a gig in the past few years that’s not the arrangement of the drumkit has probably been devised by Brooklynite Maya Hayuk. Her powerfully colourful, invigorating and overstimulating geometry experiments have accompanied Flaming Lips, MIA, Beastie Boys, TV On The Radio, Prefuse 73 and more. This weekend at Sugar Mountain her work will be virtually inescapable. Not only will you get to see an installation concocted by Maya and San Franciscan portrait artist Kyle Ranson in the foyer of The Forum on Saturday, but they’re also staging the collaborative exhibition Yes! and accompanying artist workshop ‘Drawing Games Will Set You Free’ at No Vacancy next week. Here, Hayuk talks to Gillian Tozer about treating art like waitressing, painting along to Willie Nelson and choosing when not to sell out.

Gillian Tozer: So you’re doing the interior to the Forum in Melbourne with Kyle Ranson this year.

Maya Hayuk: Yes, I’m so excited, I’ve never been to Melbourne. I’ve always wanted to go, and every place I go I can only go to if I have a project there. Story of my life. 
This is so loose right now, but I’m building this kind of entranceway that goes into the lobby itself. I’ve been working on weaving fabric and dipping it into paint and making huge installations out of them. My friend Kyle paints mainly heads and faces, it’s kind of super-sexual, but we have a really similar colour palette, and we’ve been friends since we were, like, 19. We’re both really into pattern work and we definitely have major crossover, like weird psych-y freaky shit. We’re going to collaborate in some way, we’re going to build this thing right now in our heads, it’s like a mountain made out of wooden heads that are all flat, with colourful fabrics coming out of the eyes and mouths… or something.

GT: You’re doing a show at No Vacancy too.

MH: Yeah, and I’ve been working on little paintings thinking I can throw five or six into a suitcase, the end. But then two weeks ago I was told there was so much excitement about our show that it’s been moved to the big space, which is 4000 square feet or something. It’s great, I’m totally excited about it, but it means these little pieces are suddenly going to be dwarfed, and I have to make more of them, and I have to rethink everything. But I leave on the eighth of January so I have time. I work really well on the eleventh hour.

GT: What’s it like being a full time artist?

MH: It’s the best! Honestly I wake up every single day and I count my blessings. It’s so funny because I just spent Christmas with my dad and he’s so proud of me. He can’t even fully believe it. He was asking me my itinerary for the next couple of months. It’s been that way for a really long time, but for years and years I was supplementing my work with other non-fulltime things which I think are very easy to get sucked into. So it’s great, it’s really mind-blowingly fucking cool. To think that all I have to do today is create artwork, and I can’t call in sick, I can’t get anybody to cover my shift…I can’t think of a better existence for myself.

There’s always intense creative obstacles, though, like while you’re working on something on any given day you might just believe it’s the best thing in the world, and then the next day you’ll look at it and think it’s the stupidest most schlockiest clichéd garbage. So it feels like those ebbs and flows are really extreme. Being alone is weird as well, like I’m always by myself and then thrust into these weird social situations. So, like, apart from talking to my boyfriend this morning this interview is the first time I’ve had to use my mouth all day. It’s weird sometimes.

Also I’m always working on a lot of things all at the same time, so I definitely call up all my waitressing skills. When you’re waitressing every table needs something, whether it be their menus, or they need a cheque placed, or they need a table to be cleared… so in both situations, at every given moment, nothing is finished and there’s a systematic order that everything has to be done, like with layers of paint drying and so on.

GT: I think what I like about your work is that there’s this fine line between abstract art and all this amazing geometry, really positive lights and energies, but then it’s also design. The projects you’ve done and the clients you’ve worked for suggest this dual use of your work.

MH: All those projects came from fine art though. It wasn’t like people were hiring me to do design because they could have hired a designer to do design. All the commercial projects I’ve done, I’ve been hired because of the fine art I make. There is that grey area place where you want to cash a cheque and propagate your own studio practice and take the money and run, and if it means I don’t have to bartend anymore or do other dumb work to fuel my own studio practice then it feels okay to me. There are definitely places where I draw the line, like I won’t endorse cigarettes, and I haven’t been really stoked on doing car related things like combustible engine oil. Banks I haven’t done either, I’ve been asked but I just don’t want to.

GT: If you had to live and work in a city other than New York, outside of the US, where would it be?

MH: Well, the things I like about New York are un-duplicatable in other places and that’s part of why New York is so great. There’s access to ongoing awesome culture, and it’s the only place where you really don’t have to have a car. I guess if I was to live somewhere other than New York I would want to go to an extreme opposite sort of place. Like go and live in Mongolia on a cashmere farm and pick cashmere off the bellies of goats and knit sweaters out of it.

GT: What do you listen to in your studio?

MH: I listen to a lot of soft rock, like Hot 97 and 92.3. They play the same five songs and then a commercial all the time, but those five songs are great! Like that Flo Rida song, I love that right now, and that freakin’ Adele song that you can just sing along at the top of your lungs to no matter what. That music and those stations make me dance around in the cold so I’m really pumped. But I listen to a lot of MPR, FUV and KXP which is more alternative. I draw the line at Dave Matthews though. I feel embarrassed listening to adult contemporary while I’m painting really psychedelic stuff. But if I’m blasting Black Dice then afterwards I’ll suddenly want to listen to Willie Nelson.

IMAGES: By Sara Sani at Maya Hayuk’s New York studio.

Sugar Mountain happens at the Forum on Sat Jan 14. A small number of tickets are still available here. Check the Sugar Mountain site for information on artists and the satellite arts program.