Max Hayslette
Max Hayslette (born Maxwell Hayslette; June 11, 1929[1]) is an American painter, exhibit designer and graphic artist. He is best known for his landscape and abstract paintings which have been broadly marketed throughout the United States, and internationally, in the form of limited-edition serigraph and giclee prints.
Career and education[edit]
Born in Rupert, West Virginia, Hayslette showed artistic ability early in life and began exhibiting his work at venues including the Allied Artists of West Virginia and West Virginia Women's Club art exhibits when he was still in high school.[2] Graduating as valedictorian of his class in 1948,[3] he studied for two years at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and subsequently attended classes at the Art Institute of Chicago where his teachers included Egon Weiner and Alexander Archipenko.[4] In 1952, he began working for Kenneth Olson Design in Chicago. Except for a period of military service in 1953–1954, he remained with Olson until relocating in Seattle in 1961.[5]
Hayslette joined Martin Berg and Associates, interior and exhibit designers, in Seattle in 1962. His assignments during the next decade included developing major exhibits for industrial clients including Boeing, Mitsubishi and Georgia-Pacific, and designing pavilions for four World’s Fairs.[6] Winning acclaim for his State of Alaska pavilions at both the 1962 Seattle, and 1964 New York World’s Fairs, Hayslette’s Australia Pavilion at the 1974 Spokane World’s Fair was singled out by the New York Times as the Fair’s “most successful” exhibit in reflecting the event’s environmentally friendly theme. [7]
In 1973, Hayslette founded Olympus Graphics. The Seattle-based company produced affordable, large-scale (up to 8 feet in length) limited-edition serigraphs featuring artwork by Hayslette for corporate and hotel interior decoration. Olympus Graphics developed a nationwide clientele before being acquired, and renamed Grand Image, by Larry Winn in 1984.[8]
While Hayslette continued to create original artwork for Grand Image, he focused increasingly on pursuing his own painting interests in the ensuing years. Equally conversant in realism and abstraction, his work has since been featured in dozens of solo shows at galleries in the states of Washington, California, North Carolina and West Virginia, and at institutions including the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art and West Virginia University.[9] The latter institution holds an extensive collection of Hayslette’s work as well as personal papers documenting his long and diverse career.[10]
References[edit]
- ^ See Max Hayslette oral history conducted by Steven Lantz, November 23, 2013, regarding variance between family and government records relating to Hayslette's birthdate. Max Hayslette Archives, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University.
- ^ “Allied Artists Prize-Winning Exhibit Opens Today,” Charleston Gazette, April 18, 1948; “Two Young Artists Have Exhibits at Woman’s Club Meet,” 1948 news clipping in Max Hayslette Archives. Numerous additional clippings in Max Hayslette Archives.
- ^ News clipping, Max Hayslette Archives, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University
- ^ “Maxwell Hayslette to Enroll in Academy of Art in Chicago” Charleston Gazette, September 5, 1950. Max Hayslette Archives.
- ^ Hayslette Archives; Lantz
- ^ “Exhibit Specialists Build 600 Panel Exhibit…,” Screen Process Magazine, November, 1967. “Exhibit of the Month; Squares Really Sing,” Display World, January 1969; Lantz.
- ^ “Expo ’74: Merging Marx and Macy’s,” New York Times, July 14, 1974, 397.
- ^ “Grand Image Releases New Giclees by Hayslette,” Art Business News, September 2001, 29. Max Hayslette; Paintings and Prints, Seattle: Grand Image Galleries, 2005, 56 pp. Lantz.
- ^ “Late Modernist Max Hayslette Bares Soul on Bainbridge,” Kitsap Daily News, June 8, 2010; “Hayslette Painting auctioned as Fundraiser,” Beckley Herald Register, December 19 2010; “The Emotion of Place; International Artist Returns to Roots,” WV South Magazine, February/March, VI, 2011, 51–53; “You Can Go Home Again; Local Painter Celebrated,” Kitsap Week, April 22, 2011, 10; “Artist has History with Rainelle,” West Virginia Daily News (Lewisburg, WV),” February 7, 2011, 6; “The Rugged Coast, Local Artist Max Hayslette Turns His Focus to Northwest Sights,” Kitsap Daily News, April 4, 2014.
- ^ "Collection: Max Hayslette, Artist, Papers and Artwork | West Virginia University Archivesspace".