Marti Haykin and Marc Snyder: Adrift

“Adrift”, an exhibition by Marti Haykin and Marc Snyder, featured individual and collaborative works in sculpture and printmaking by the two artists. 

“Adrift” is an exhibition of concrete, cloth, and conscience.  Marti Haykin’s sculptural work features babies sculpted in clay and then cast in concrete.  She states that “in a society that cages children (some yet too young to have weaned from their mothers’ breasts) at our Southern border, tosses aside people fleeing extreme violence, ignores pleas from scientists that our environment is burning up, and refuses even the simplest of steps to protect one another in a global pandemic (e.g., wearing masks), we are abandoning our helpless members.”  Her concrete infants poignantly address these concerns.  Marc Snyder’s work consists primarily of his woodcuts and linocuts hand-printed on muslin.  The various printed elements depict objects such as maple seeds, skulls, spark plugs, power lines, gas pumps, bullets, methane molecules and the coronavirus.  There are images that contrast the beauty of the scattering of seeds or the flight of birds with the clutter and destruction of our short-sighted environmental decisions. Much of the work in the exhibition is a collaborative effort between the two artists.  The collaborative works came to reflect current events, addressing the war in Ukraine and the resulting refugee crisis.

Marti Haykin, MFA, MD, originally trained as a printmaker, at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, before pursuing her other passion, neurology.  After receiving her Master of Fine Arts Degree, she taught studio art and art appreciation, at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, GA.  After volunteering for three years at the Georgia War Veterans Home, she felt called to become a physician.  She earned her MD degree from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta and completed her neurology residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital in CT.  When she is not working as a neurohospitalist at Westmoreland and Latrobe Hospitals, she is addressing current social justice issues through her drawings, sculptures, and wearable art.

Marc Snyder is a printmaker who also trained at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.  After receiving his Master of Fine Arts degree, he was an associate professor at Georgia College and State University, where he taught studio art and art history, served as the university art gallery director, and was the art editor for Arts & Letters, A Journal of Contemporary Culture.  In 2001, he embarked on his career as a freelance artist, widely exhibiting his work.  Recent exhibitions include “Narratives of the Possible” in Laramie, WY and “Catalog” in Charlottesville, VA and Louisville, KY.  His current work explores environmental themes and our increasingly fragile relationship with the natural world.