-PROVFLUX ARTIST-
Benefit St. Upclose
by Kerry E. Adams
I am interested in many aspects of environment: physical surroundings, domestic spaces, memory, and the natural world. I believe that our environments simultaneously shape, express, and hide aspects of who we are. The objects we surround ourselves with and the things we remember (correctly or incorrectly) contribute to our individuality and define the collective memories of our communities.
I address our perception of environments through multi-media
installations and sculptures. In these works, I use familiar, approachable
objects such as yarn, traditional sculpting materials, and more ecologically
charged materials such as consumer waste. For example, in Collection and Consumption:
A View of Our Culture through Vessels, installed at The RISD Museum, Joan
Wyand and I installed a case containing beautiful, deteriorating consumer
waste vessels between two of the museum’s cases of contemporary handcrafted
ceramics. This case set up a dialogue about the destruction of our natural
world while examining the museum environment and spaces of display.
My constructed environments stem from my own experiences, memories, or stories
I have collected from others. However, my work is also influenced by Doris
Salcedo’s investigation of memory, Alan Wexler’s relation of body
to architecture (such as in his piece dining building with window chairs,
1983), and Janine Antoni’s experiential works that relate directly to
her life.
Through my use of universal objects or raw materials, my pieces try to move beyond a personal experience to set moods and raise questions. Rather than creating a personal narrative, I aim to make viewers question their relationship to the work and their own histories. My sculptures and installations contain traces of specifics that key into our individual experiences, encouraging the viewer to create a narrative.
My ideas and visual vocabulary are also influenced by abandoned, dilapidated buildings which have their own unspoken histories, and in which the man-made and natural worlds begin to resume balance.
Kerry Adams is currently completing her BFA in Sculpture at RISD. More of
Kerry’s work can be seen in Collection and Consumption, on
display at the RISD Museum.
