blog – Page 5 – Deidre Adams

Composition IV – Sold!

Composition IV, 42 x 42 inches, acrylic paint on stitched textile. ©Deidre Adams

Just a quick one today, to celebrate some good news.

I had a lovely trip to Portland last week to attend the SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) Fiberlandia conference in Portland. It was fun to see old friends again and meet some new ones. The presentations were all quite excellent, but the standouts for me were hearing Namita Gupta Wiggers talk about the position of the quilt in the context of history and the larger art world. She definitely got me thinking about trying some new directions in my work, one of which would be to consider working at a much larger scale. I tend to work within a narrow range of sizes, mostly due to the convenience of shipping and storage. But Namita made me see how working bigger could open up some new opportunities.

Maria Shell also gave a great talk on researching and applying for grant opportunities. I’ve had that on my to-do list for a long time, but for some reason always find other obligations more pressing. And still, I’m thinking, when I get done with X, Y, and Z, I’ll get right on that!

Then I had a great time exploring Portland, which is my new favorite city.

Yesterday, I received word that Composition IV has sold to Methodist Mansfield Medical Center. This piece has always been one of my favorites, and I’m so happy it has found a new home. Now, off to the next adventure – another trip to New York.

May 5th, 2015|Career and focus|5 Comments

Tracings series exhibition at Visions Art Museum

Visions Art Museum

2825 Dewey Road, Suite 100
San Diego, CA 92106

Opening reception: Sat. Aug. 9 :: 5-7 pm
Exhibition continues through Sept. 21, 2014

Tracings is a solo invitational exhibition of my recent work in the Tracings series. I use fabric, found papers, paint, and stitch to explore the traces of our presence left behind as we navigate the various systems of knowledge developed in our attempts to understand the world we live in.

See images of the work here
Read about my process here

If you’re in the San Diego area, I hope you can join me for the opening reception on Aug. 9, 5-7 pm.

This exhibition runs concurrently with:

Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry: 30 Quilts for 30 Years
A solo exhibition created by Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry celebrating her 30 years of quilt-making.

and

Hanging Garden of California – Arline Fisch
An installation of brightly colored floating wire forms and jewelry from the artist’s collection.

August 5th, 2014|Exhibitions|Comments Off

Contemporary Takes on Traditional Patterns

Contemporary Takes on Traditional Patterns is an exhibition at the Denver Art Museum on view through March 22, 2015. Curated by Judith Trager, a Colorado artist/teacher and well-known expert and advocate for fiber arts, this special “mini-exhibition” consists of smaller works by 10 contemporary artists designed to bring the past and present together as a complement to the larger First Glance/Second Look exhibition featuring 20 quilts from the Museum’s collection.

My piece Progress? was made to complement the “Ordered Chaos” category of the larger exhibition, which features crazy quilts from the late 19th century. My artist statement:

“My work often uses the concepts of time and external forces as a creative starting point. In this piece, I’m exploring the concepts of entropy, decay, and dissipation as applied to a traditional quilting motif, the half-square triangle. When done in dark and light values, this motif is sometimes called Sunshine and Shadows. It recalls the ancient Chinese concept of the dynamic interplay of two opposites — yin and yang.”

Progress?, detail

Thanks to a $3 million gift from the Avenir Foundation in 2012, the Denver Art Museum has a special department and galleries devoted to textile arts, as well as funding in perpetuity for its staff. Its curator is Dr. Alice Zrebiec, who was named as the Denver Post’s 2013 Top Thinker in the category of Arts and Culture for her work in the transformation and expansion of the department.

Last Thursday, the DAM held a special reception to celebrate the opening of the exhibition, and Dr. Zrebiec did a gallery walkthrough to tell us about the wonderful quilts on display.

The Contemporary Takes pieces are installed in “discovery drawers” in the gallery’s Nancy Lake Benson Thread Studio, a comfortable, inviting interactive area where visitors can learn about many aspects of textile art, have conversations, and see demonstrations. In the photo below, works by Wendy Huhn (near) and Miriam Basart (far). The other artists in this exhibition are Faye Anderson, Sharon Bass, Betsy Cannon, Lynda Faires, Gretchen Hill, the Pixeladies (Kris Sazaki & Deb Cashatt), and Melody Randol.

Here’s mine.

May 31st, 2014|Exhibitions|2 Comments