hailey nathel (b. 1996) is a painter who uses interdisciplinary methods and screen-based distractions to her advantage. In 2018, hailey received her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied Painting and Psychological & Brain Sciences. Since then, she has worked as a yoga instructor, a curator and cofounder of artist collective gadget_gurls, an Arts Admissions coach & tutor, and a scenic artist for Showtime, ABC, and Hulu television shows. She is currently based in Northern California and pursuing a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Visual Arts at UC Berkeley Extension.
Seeing the world through a cyberfeminist lens, hailey uses sincerity and humor to explore Mirror [painting / time-based media], Shadow [photography / drawing], and Glitch [digital painting / DIY printing] as visual and conceptual motifs:
♡ Her participatory painting project, #theMirrorMemoirs (WIP), uses interpretations of “mirror-selfie” shared on Instagram to create paintings that look at gender roles on and offline, while raising money for Alzheimer’s research.
♡ Through photography and drawing, she’s also been casually exploring shadow as reflection and mirror’s counterpart. And eventually, in her next series of paintings, she plans to use shadow to tackle Facebook—Instagram’s predecessor and #tMM’s prequel.
♡ Her digital series, Seasonal glitches, is an infinite evolution of digitally produced colorful disruptions. By engaging with the intended uses and creative failures inherent in personal technology, hailey leverages mishap as a catalyst for discovery and [re]invention.
While esthetics may vary by medium, her focus remains on looking at the way we see, using the eyes of her embodied and digital-self—as they become one and the same.
-Berlant & Novak
GLITCH STATEMENT
Since definition negatively connotes “glitch” as malfunction, it’s easy to think it an unfriendly derailment...
In 2017, I dragged a .jpeg into Photoshop. It turned to glitch — a completely pixelated, unrecognizable image — presumably because I had too many files open on an old computer. This continued. I was frustrated but eventually endeared by these willful abstractions. ⌘shift4, a screenshot snapped, a file saved.
During the pandemic, I returned to my folder of glitches, augmenting the originals by repeating a series of functions: spiking, smoothing, twirling, recoloring, and generally disrupting — as they once did to me.
Most recently, a trip to Georgia O’Keeffe’s home and studio inspired imagery resembling shells, flowers, butterflies, nipples, hair, and various happenings along the way. Through seemingly synesthetic associations between color, energy, and personality, I now pair glitches with titles embodying women antagonist/antihero characters in media to call attention to the glitchiest sides of ourselves.
Seasonal glitches is a cyberfeminist series about the conflation of natural and digital environments and our experiences of time, truth, and perception through the veils of a screen.
Inspired by Legacy Russell, Maggie Nelson, Zadie Smith, Jia Tolentino, Joanne McNeil, & bell hooks ♡