A San Francisco resident of three decades, Gay Outlaw is an artist, with gallery exhibits spanning California and beyond. Indeed, her creations are everywhere — except in her hometown Mobile.
That will soon change.
Gay has been commissioned to create a permanent piece for USA Children’s and Women’s Hospital Emergency Room Entrance. Her sculpture will be dedicated on September 26. “I have never shown my work in Mobile in my 30-plus years of doing this,” says Gay over the phone at her San Francisco studio. “I want it to be good.”
Her art path started young in life. As a student at Wright School for Girls (now UMS-Wright Preparatory School), she enjoyed art history, but Gay also learned from life. Cooking skills were acquired from her mom and grandmother. Gay applied culinary knowledge to her artistic creativity. Soon she would add food to art. In addition, she frequently visited her grandfather, a self-taught painter, who advised his granddaughter, “You should be an artist.”
Her career path included the University of Virginia where she studied French. After college graduation, Gay moved to Paris and learned the art of pastry at the Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne.
Returning stateside, she studied at the International Center for Photography in New York before moving to San Francisco. “Serendipity brought me here,” she says about California’s City by the Bay. She and husband, Bob Schmitz live there today.
Also in the creative path, Gay worked for a small gourmet food company in New York and later for an advertising agency where she handled her firm’s Pepperidge Farm account. In addition, she was employed in food retail and wholesale businesses.
Left Outlaw’s 2020 piece “New Crate Wave.” Right, top “Three-Legged Inversion,” 2009. Bottom (left to right) Outlaw’s pieces “Intersection” and “Bird Plane House” at the SFO Installation in 2020.
But in her late 20s, Mobile’s hometown artist decided to make art her life’s work. She notes about the craft, “I felt I was good at it but mainly this was something I wanted to do and believed I could do for all of my life.” Outlaw’s early works in sculpture included perishable items such as caramelized sugar pieces. “During my first few years in San Francisco, I made objects using pastry materials,” she recalls. “Growing up in Mobile, I had a sweet tooth for pralines and loved baking in my mother’s kitchen.” She transferred that love to her early work.
Gay’s sculptural endeavors expanded to bronze, aluminum and other metals. Her exhibitions have been featured at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the University of California at Long Beach, Mills College Art Museum, and the SculptureCenter in New York. “Every show is a thrill,” she says about having her work exhibited publicly. “It is a thrill to have that validation of your work.”
She also has three permanent pieces displayed at the San Francisco International Airport. Who knew a California bayside city’s airport would have a connection to an Alabama bayside city’s hospital? Arlene Mitchell knows. “I had wanted to put a sculpture at the USA Children’s and Women’s Hospital for a long time,” says Ms. Mitchell, philanthropist and friend of Gay. The Mobile project’s benefactor continues, “Gay was in town. She, my daughter and I were having lunch in Mobile when a woman approached our table. She said, ‘Gay I saw your sculpture at the San Francisco Airport. You should do something like that in Mobile.’ Bingo!” says Ms. Mitchell. “That was just the answer I needed! It was a sign!” Gay was approved for the job.
There is some assembly required both in California and Alabama for the art piece. Under construction in San Francisco, the piece features 120 cast aluminum flowers of painted metal. The flowers will be connected to a network of patina bronze stems, machined and twisted into cast bronze bases. The sculpture will fill a large oval shaped median in front of the hospital’s emergency room entrance.
Final on-site assembly begins the week after Labor Day. Also on site will be Gay Outlaw, home once again. “To be able to have a permanent piece, particularly in this location, at this wonderful hospital, is special,” she notes. “I hope the sculpture will mean something to people who will see it. I know it means a lot to me.”
