Sherman Hay
1948 - 2017
Born September 12th, 1948 and raised in San Jose, California, Sherman Hay’s love of art began at age five working alongside his grandmother creating mosaic designs on bowls, and he developed a talent for drawing that he practiced through high school. In 1966 he was drafted into the military, where he joined the Marine Corps and served in Vietnam near the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone. With the G.I. Bill, Hay explored abstract and expressionist forms of art earning his B.A. in Fine Arts in 1976 from California StateUniversity, Hayward. Here he learned the art of lithography and intaglio printmaking, studying under Misch Kohn and other faculty. He continued this exploration, earning a Masters of Arts in Printmaking from California StateUniversity, Humboldt, in 1979. Hay’s surviving work from the 1970s often uses human faces and figures in expressionistic and dreamlike settings achieved by his printing techniques.
He relocated shortly after his Masters Degree to the Sonora, California region, where he would live the rest of his life. He spent most of his career as an art instructor at Columbia College, Modesto Junior College, and Merced Community College. He also taught art for twenty years in theCalifornia State Prison system and California Youth Authority as a contract artist working with the William James Association and through thirteen Artist in Residence Grants for Artists Serving Social Institutions that he earned through the California Arts Council.
In the 1980’s Hay’s work shifted away from the looser, expressionistic printmaking of his graduate period toward more precise and architectural forms inspired by his interest in constructivism, while always maintaining interest in figuration. He quickly diversified from his 2D work into many forms of sculpture. The rest of his career as artist would see him investigating and juxtaposing more purely geometric, constructivist aesthetics with organic forms, gradually embracing the organic increasingly as he matured without ever giving up his commitment to precision and mastery. After moving to his final home in 2002, over the next two decades Hay built a huge environmental sculpture using rock, stone, concrete, ceramic and metal at his home in Sonora, California.
He completed several Public Art Projects, including a sculpture at the Calaveras County Library, San Andreas; ten brass butterflies embedded into the cement sidewalk in front of Harrison Elementary School in Stockton; and two mosaic tile murals: an image of Mark Twain for Mark Twain Elementary School, Angels Camp, and a cougar for Copperopolis Elementary School. He also won awards in numerous juried competitions throughout the country.
Hay’s health and mobility declined in the last decade of his life, and he passed away on March 10th, 2017 after two years of severe illness. His artistic vision, his joy in his craft, his skill in teaching, and his hard work were inspirational to his family and those that knew him. He sought through his life and labor the means to cultivate beauty in the world as a force to counter the violence he witnessed in Vietnam. He strove always to innovate and evolve as an artist, never slackening his pace even when he was confronted with severe difficulties, and he saw art as a means to bring enlightenment, deep joy, and loving-kindness to society.
