Blake Haygood

Blake Haygood is an artist, curator, and co-director of Platform Gallery. His current paintings involve machinery parts of undeterminable scale floating in space without a horizon and in constant states of decomposition and regeneration. “I think of my art as a way of telling stories. Referencing a combination of organic and mechanical imagery filtered through my imperfect memory, I’ve imagined a vocabulary of forms to populate a fictional world and to build a kind of contemporary mythology,” says the artist.

Blake has recently exhibited at the Platform Gallery (Seattle), Gallery One (Ellensburg), the Tacoma Art Museum, and the Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle). Blake was recently nominated for the Neddy Artist Fellowship for Printmaking. He has also received a Seattle Arts Commission Sustaining Award and he was a finalist for the Betty Bowen Award (1996). Blake has a show in 2007 at the Missoula Art Museum.

Blake received 2004 GAP Award funding to offset costs involved in the production of an upcoming show, including wood panels, paint, mediums, varnish, and brushes. In addition, funding will cover the cost of truck rental and transport of the pieces for documentation and installation, as well as marketing costs, including postcards, mailing lists, and documentation in slide and large print photo formats.

As part of his Fellowship’s Meet the Artist requirements, Blake spoke at The Evergreen State College. Approximately 70 students, faculty and community members heard how he came to pursue a career as an artist and to co-found Platform Gallery in Seattle. He spoke about three distinct phases in his artistic career, beginning with his first show and studio, and shared images that tracked his development. He spoke of his time with a commercial gallery and how he found opportunities to promote his work, stitching together jobs in the arts to make a living. He finished by speaking about the formation of Platform and his current work. Afterwards, he answered questions from the audience: What are your influences? How is it running a gallery? How do you get a gallery? He stated, “It was fun, and made me analyze what I do and why—and hopefully the audience learned something as well.”