“It’s a typical suburban house that looks familiar,” Ankori said. “But then it’s scary and threatening and weird.”

There was that word again: weird. It is common to hear people describe Hayden’s work in foreign terms. But the Texas-born artist sees these reactions as evidence of something like empathy.

“Sometimes you become aware of another person’s lived experience, and the absurdity or difficulty is so foreign to you that that’s your response,” Hayden said in an interview during a visit to Boston for the opening of the Rose exhibit. humorous or that it’s weird.”

Hayden is a gregarious conversationalist who laughs easily and goes off on whimsical tangents. But his work betrays an unusual level of focus and attention to detail. The artist was employed as an architect for a time and brings a similar rigor to his sculptures. His pieces are handcrafted with movements, so that a tree branch or a thorn emerging from a piece of furniture represents an organic growth, with no hardware or stitching to spoil the impression of wholeness.

Recently, Hayden has turned his attention to the human form, carving exquisite wooden replicas of the human skeleton, though always altered in an unexpected or disturbing way. One of the newest sculptures on display at the Rose, “American Gothic,” features two skeletons side by side in an absurd riff on Grant Wood’s famous painting, their limbs transformed into tools used for work around the house or yard— a shovel, a feather duster, a toilet plunger.

Hayden admitted that the play might strike some as funny or macabre. But he explained that he liked the skeletons because they function as a sort of blank canvas.

“To the average viewer, (a skeleton) has no identity,” Hayden said. “It has no gender, it has no race, it has no religion. He has no sexual orientation.”

Hayden, who is black, often makes work that engages race and masculinity. But he resists readings of his art that are strictly tied to his identity.

“For someone who’s really attuned to what my work is, they might see all these things that are more autobiographical in the work,” Hayden said. “But there are other people who can say, ‘Oh, that’s like me. This is my grandmother. This is so-and-so’”.

Hayden offered that his expansive approach likely stems from his background as an architect, a job that required him to design public buildings that were welcoming to everyone. He seemed to revel in the idea that two people could look at one of his artworks and come to completely opposite conclusions about its meaning — even if he was commenting on a hot-button issue like policing in America. He noted that he received criticism that his own point of view was not always evident in his work.

“A lot of times I have a side that I would probably be more inclined toward,” Hayden said. “But I think also part of the crazy beauty of this country is that two people could look at the same thing and have polar opposite opinions … and like it for different reasons.”

Seeing works from his entire decade-long career in one place at the Rose prompted his own shift in perspective. Some of Hayden’s older plays make him cringe now. Others look different on the walls of the museum – like a sculpture, a basketball hoop woven from green vines, titled “Fee-fi-fo-fum”. A whoosh of myrrh descends from the panel like a walrus whisker.

“It showed up higher on the wall than I showed it when it was in a gallery show,” Hayden said. “So it takes the height and shape of this kind of bushy, slanted basketball goal.”

It reminds him of a crucifix up there on the wall. Something about seeing the play in a new context, he said, turned it into something else.

“Hugh Hayden: Work at Home” at the Rose Museum is visible until June 1, 2025.