Mary Hayslip died Friday morning, Dec 5 in her Houston home at 7:40AM. She was looked after very well by friends & neighbors for the last weeks of her life. She had stage 4 bone cancer and had been making plans for her exit for the past few months. Planning her estate, her memorial, giving away her art and planning a sale of her house and all its contents. (These will all go to benefit 3 Houston charities.)

I stopped in for week to visit her at the end of October, traveling from Upstate New York to my place in Merida, MX. She faced her fate head-on with her usual no-nonsense POV, which I have to say was pretty awesome to witness, if not difficult to watch, but she was a trooper. I took these photos of her incredible art installation she called a home in late October.

*Mary with (she will kill me, I forget the name…)*

*At Hugo’s in October for Sunday brunch with Star & Jack Massing. (Thumb photo, Jack)*

I’m from Houston, so when I moved to New York permanently in the early 80s, I returned home every December, while my Mom, brother, Grandmother, Dad & stepmother all still lived there. My Dad & Grandmother are gone and everyone else has moved away but Mary remained on my short list of friends to visit, along with our good pal Janet Meyer, whom I met over 45 years ago at Houston City Magazine. I also reconnected recently with artist Jack Massing who became friends with Mary on their own.

*Mary at her ArtWear opening in NYC, circa 1984 (Polaroid, Trey Speegle)*

*Trey Speegle, 80s Polaroid collage, 1984/ 2024, edition of 11. (Mary Hayslip, upper left)*

I first met Mary in 1981 on the dance floor of Parade disco in Houston, which was a former grocery store and is now the permanent home the Menil Collection’s Dan Flavin installation, Richmond Hall. (She loved to recall this story, I only remember it from her retelling it over the years many times) I was dancing like a young spastic New Waver, I’m sure, and she was nearby and we started to dance together. When we took a break and introduced ourselves, Mary said,

“I think we’re going to be good friends for a long time.”

We were.

*The Menil Collection’s, Richmond Hall, permanent installation of Dan Flavin. (Mary & I first met right about where this photo was taken)*

In case you’re wondering, Mary was magic. People say that about others a lot, but with Mary it was really true. She had her own rules about EVERYTHING. I’m controlling by nature (ask my friends) but Mary was on a whole ‘nother level of what she would and wouldn’t do. (If you know, you know.) And she conjured all sorts of people, places and situations.

*Red Mary, 1981 hand-colored Xerox from a Polaroid, Trey Speegle.*

How about Mary’s style? She was born with it. A clothes horse, and not in the conventional sense. Shoes, handbags, accessories, scarves, jeans, dresses, jewelry galore. We spent a great deal of time talking about clothes. Dressing up to go out was a thing in the 80s and Mary was one stylin’ chick. Look at us here on the roof of my building on Avenue B on Thompkins Park, circa ‘82. Pretty cute, huh? As I always say, everyone is a little bit cute in their 20s.

There are more shots of Mary in her kitchen, Mary in my 80s Polaroid book, Mary in LA, Mary with various beloved pets. There’s no shortage of Mary in cute looks. The last thing I ever bought her was from UAL, her favorite designer discount shop. She was wearing these blue side Birkenstocks while we were shopping and I eyed a bag in the same color, faux fur, teddy bear soft, with a chunky (plastic) gold chain as a handle. I grabbed it and covered the price saying, “I’m buying this for you, but if you look at the price, deal’s off…” She didn’t look.

Mary was also VERY specific about what she ate, what she wouldn’t eat, supplements, vitamins, etc. Also exercise and keeping fit. In the end her body betrayed her after all the care she had shown it, as it does us all, I guess.

Let’s talk about art and Mary’s relationship to it. She really was an artist’s artist. She couldn’t help but create. She saw the world through a different lens than us mere mortals. She had ideas and continually made things and like all good artists, she developed her own visual vocabulary and techniques. Over the years, so many different things it would need a small book to recount all her different periods.

In 2011, we had a show together at Art League Houston – VOODOO POP: Mary Hayslip & Trey Speegle - 30 Years of Friendship & Art. We exhibited individual works as we as our correspondences over the decades. It was great fun to do. Now I appreciate so much that I got to collaborate with one of my favorite people and artists. She had a tiny mosaic-by-number of a clown in the exhibit & I showed my clown self-portrait, You Who. She always promised me the clown mosaic and when I saw her in October, she told me to take it with me, so I knew she knew she only had weeks left.

I designed many invitations for Mary’s exhibits (if not all) and often helped her come up with titles, as well. I’m in Mexico at the moment and don’t have access to all my archives, but here’s her last one at Isabella Valise/ Devin Borden, plus her postcard carousel, which contains hundreds of cards, including mine to & for Mary, that span five decades.

*A work from Loco Mundo (left to me) with ingenious engineering by Hayslip; the base is metal, and the figure is hematite, which is magnetic, that holds the piece together.*

*My collection of Mary pieces, many of which are wearable… most recent was a spider, top right.*

*A beaded eye patch Mary made in ‘24 for me to wear to a friend’s surrealist birthday party in Mexico.*

One running conversation that we had over the course of 40+ years was about the actor Richard Edson. She & I had an encounter with him and a certain punk band in the 80s, and she and I may or may not have slept with some of their members, honestly if I start to go into details, this will scroll on for days. Suffice to say, we discussed her soul crush on Richard nearly every time we talked. She had communicated with him via text email lately and she felt they were on the outs.

She asked if I thought she should reach out to him one last time to tell him her situation. I said yes, that sounded like closure and he might regret not getting the chance to say goodbye. She said, for whatever reason, I was the only person that encouraged her to do this. This led me to believe what I always suspected; I was not the only person who she had this running conversation with.

Well, she showed me what she was sending, I approved and it was sent and responded to. She said she was happy I encouraged her to send it, but somehow I know this won’t be the last of this conversation about Richard. Somewhere, she’s telling a departed friend the update, no doubt.

*Mary Hayslip’s photo collage of me, 2011. Photo, Greg Stephens, circa ‘79.*

Sounds like we had a special relationship, right? It was one I considered rare and unique. For me it was, but I discovered that Mary (hence the Richard Edson saga) had these kinds of close relationships with MANY friends. What?! She was cheating on me all these years!? It’s true, she was a friendship slut. I’m teasing, of course, I loved what we had, the memories are dear to me, but Mary had many, MANY good friends. And they are all likely hurting right now.

It really does hurt, but I’m not going to carry the hurt for too much longer, I hope. I’m choosing to transmute that pain into a zest for life and into nurturing my good friendships (and tossing out the phony ones) for the rest of my days. The best way to honor the loss of a friend, if you ask me, is to do your best to incorporate the things you love about them into yourself. Become that great dresser, that great friend, that trusted ally that you miss.

Mary was actually excited (and seemingly not afraid) about the next stage of her journey. She texted me this a couple of months ago.

“I’m grateful I’m at peace with the thought of dying and feel confident that there’s somewhere better in my future.”

After I got to Merida in October, in one of our last conversations, I read a recent scientific discovery aloud to her;

“Time may not move forward, it may be folding around you right now

Groundbreaking quantum research revealed a mind-bending truth: time might not flow in a straight line from past to future. Instead, it could fold onto itself, creating loops where the past, present, and future constantly interact. This challenges everything we know about cause and effect and suggests that your present actions might already be subtly reshaping your past.

At the heart of this discovery lies quantum entanglement, the strange phenomenon where particles remain connected across distance and time. When one particle changes, its partner instantly reflects that change, even if separated by vast space. Scientists now believe this connection may extend beyond space to time itself, forming what they call “temporal entanglement.” In other words, what happens now may ripple backward, influencing events that have already occurred at the quantum level.

For centuries, we’ve lived by the arrow of time—birth to death, sunrise to sunset. But these new findings suggest that time might be less like an arrow and more like a circle, continuously folding and unfolding upon itself. Our universe may be replaying, rewriting, and rebalancing in ways we can’t yet perceive.

While we can’t time travel or rewrite history, this research opens doors to revolutionary possibilities, from rethinking memory and consciousness to developing new kinds of quantum communication that defy distance and delay.

If time truly folds, then every moment you live doesn’t just shape your future, it resonates through your entire existence. The universe may not separate “was” and “will be.”

It may only ever know now.”

She was very aware of her fate, and I wasn’t trying to comfort her (maybe just a little) but after I finished reading this to her, she said she really liked the idea. Now, if only this works with phone calls. Like, right now.

Maybe it does? I can still hear that voice…

“Hey, Trey… can you talk now..?”

The above obit (that Mary insisted be short & sweet) will run in the Houston Chronicle, Tuesday Dec 9, 2025. Early in 2026, there will be a celebration of life in Houston for Mary, that she planned every detail of.

Of course she did.

#RIP: ICONOCLASTIC HOUSTON ARTIST, MARY HAYSLIP

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