Background
Hays was born in Boston Massachusetts (twin brother John Hays) and lived in Connecticut until 1978, when she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to attend Mills College.
Hays was born in Boston Massachusetts (twin brother John Hays) and lived in Connecticut until 1978, when she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to attend Mills College.
She received a Bachelor in Philosophy from Mills, followed by an Master of Fine Arts in Photography from San Francisco Art Institute and an Master of Arts in Design from University of California, Berkeley, where she continued her Doctor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies.
She first gained recognition for her work in 2000 when she joined Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco. She participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions there as well as at Donna Seager Gallery in Marin, California, and Photo-Eye Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico where her work continues to be represented today. While she is especially known for cameraless and 19th Century processes, her creative work expands to realms of experimentation in all visual media.
Her seminar courses focus on the practice of art and ecology, embodied mind cognition, space constructions, topologies and visual autobiography.
At the Art Institute, she studied with Doug Hall and Ann Chamberlain. At University College Berkeley she studied with philosopher Alva Nöe, poet Lyn Hejinian, painter Tony Dubovsky, filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha and digital media artist Greg Niemeyer.
In 2012, she moved from Berkeley to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she currently resides. From 1990 to 2004 Hays was the sole proprietor of Works on Paper, a paper conservation laboratory specializing in the preservation of photographs and the production of artist’s books
In 1996, she curated the national exhibition Science Imagined for the Berkeley Art Center and in 2007 Zero In Zero Out for Donna Seager Gallery.
She joined the faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute from 2002-2012 and has also taught at California College of the Arts, University of Californina Berkeley, San Francisco Center for the Book, Shenkar College of Art and Design in Ramat Gan, Israel, and Leuphana Universität in Lüneburg Germany. She is currently contributing faculty at Santa Fe University of Art and Design. Her work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions and featured in various articles and reviews such as the New Mexico Museum of Art, Directly from Nature.
Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Verniciatura.
None-Such Space, Nature Word ~ Verbe Nature. Townsend Center for the Humanities, Everyday Constellations.
And Artists Television Access, Penumbra.