Object Poems

MaryAnn Hayden
Oakland, California

The poetry goes like this:  I wanted to make something, and so began with the visual part of these broadsides.  Then I needed some words. So I looked in the wastebasket, where Jerry (Ratch, my partner in Sombre Reptiles) had thrown some pieces away, and I cut them up and pasted them back together and used them. 

Except for the red and green one. That's all mine; it was inspired by a particularly gorgeous red and green and very silver and shiny long-haul truck.

T [“is he ever”]

Letterpress. 1981. Artist’s proof.

$75

To purchase, please contact Laura at 23 Sandy Gallery.

0427 [“the / Red / leaf”]

Letterpress on Somerset paper. 1981. Edition of 15.

$45

To purchase, please contact Laura at 23 Sandy Gallery.

[“deliberately / empty”]

Letterpess on Somerset paper. 1981. Edition of 15.

$45

To purchase, please contact Laura at 23 Sandy Gallery.

About the Artist

MaryAnn Hayden’s paintings, photographs, and letterpress works have been exhibited nationally since the mid 1970s, and can be seen online at maryannhayden.net. In the late 70s and early 80s she was the co-publisher of Sombre Reptiles, and designed and printed many books and broadsides for her own imprint and for others. Her work can be found in nearly all the major library collections in the United States, as well as the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris; in 2007 the Sombre Reptiles/MaryAnn Hayden archives were acquired by the University of Delaware.