United States, 1996
Naomi Neiel Hayes is a contemporary, California-born oil painter and ceramicist currently based in South Carolina, USA. Working in oil paint alongside hand-built and wheel-thrown ceramics, she creates still lifes, figures, and vessels characterized by elongated, hooked, or blade-like extensions. Her sculptural forms are deeply influenced by her background in the martial arts of Kajukenbo and Balintawak, where the movements of a stick or knife are translated as fluid extensions of the body.