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Yura Adams is a painter and installation artist who imagines a world drawn from the poetry of nature . She paints in an industrial building on a farm in Western Massachusetts.
Yura Adams exhibited Warm, Dark and Roaring, a solo exhibition of painting and installation at Olympia Gallery in New York City Fall of 2022, accompanied by a catalog dedicated to her work. Adams was presented at NADA New York Art Fair by Olympia, May 2022, and recently exhibited at LABspace, Hillsdale, New York, August-September 2022. In April 2023, Yura Adams will show her work at Turley Gallery in Hudson, New York.
Awards include a grant from the Peter S Reed Foundation (by nomination 2022), Drawing Center Viewing Program (2021), Pollock-Krasner Grant (2019), Martha Boschen Porter Fund, Berkshire Taconic Foundation (2017), New York State Council on the Arts (individual artist grant 2010), New York Foundation of the Arts Mark Program (2009) and National Endowment for the Arts (individual artist grant, New Genres 1985).
Adams has an extensive exhibition record throughout the Hudson Valley with many solo shows with John Davis Gallery of Hudson, New York and other venues including Opalka Gallery in Albany, New York. In the early part of her career in New York, she presented her work in locations such as Just Above Midtown, City Gallery, New Museum, Experimental Intermedia, Franklin Furnace, and FOTO Gallery. Her degrees were both earned at the San Francisco Art Institute: 1975 BFA painting and 1980 MFA, photography.
Yura Adams exhibited Warm, Dark and Roaring, a solo exhibition of painting and installation at Olympia Gallery in New York City Fall of 2022, accompanied by a catalog dedicated to her work. Adams was presented at NADA New York Art Fair by Olympia, May 2022, and recently exhibited at LABspace, Hillsdale, New York, August-September 2022. In April 2023, Yura Adams will show her work at Turley Gallery in Hudson, New York.
Awards include a grant from the Peter S Reed Foundation (by nomination 2022), Drawing Center Viewing Program (2021), Pollock-Krasner Grant (2019), Martha Boschen Porter Fund, Berkshire Taconic Foundation (2017), New York State Council on the Arts (individual artist grant 2010), New York Foundation of the Arts Mark Program (2009) and National Endowment for the Arts (individual artist grant, New Genres 1985).
Adams has an extensive exhibition record throughout the Hudson Valley with many solo shows with John Davis Gallery of Hudson, New York and other venues including Opalka Gallery in Albany, New York. In the early part of her career in New York, she presented her work in locations such as Just Above Midtown, City Gallery, New Museum, Experimental Intermedia, Franklin Furnace, and FOTO Gallery. Her degrees were both earned at the San Francisco Art Institute: 1975 BFA painting and 1980 MFA, photography.
Published on March 19th, 2023. Artist responses collected in months previous.
What are you fascinated with right now?
I am currently making sculpture that combines marble and fabric. I made some pieces as an experiment, a curator saw them, and gave me a date in his gallery to show more of these sculptural works. With a deadline for the show date, I am working in a new form (three dimensions) and my studio is half-lab with material experiments all over the place. Some fail, fall apart and get tried again. I am getting better; the work is accumulating and am happily engaged with the problem of making form and dealing with the aesthetics while not knowing 100% of the time what I am going to do next.
What advice would you give your younger artist self?
Dear younger Yura: “Don’t let your goal in life wait for later”. There was a period of my life when my babies were small, I was running a hectic business, I did not make art and lived remotely in the country.
This combination of life events consumed me and sank a dive-bomb into my career; I lost the thread. Once the business closed and the children got older, I emerged into space where I could make art again. I was determined to live as an artist again, and it was really hard work, much harder than when I first started out. Thinking about this today, I doubt that reading my advice would have changed my chosen path.
What are your tools for creative resilience these days? Do you have any methods to stay positive when life becomes difficult and perhaps when you have limited time to create?
Having a long career has given me the experience to know that going to the studio every day is the food I need in life. Because I know this, I go to the studio no matter how I am feeling in body or soul, and work. There is always something to do if I keep projects rolling. I can prepare a ground if I am feeling particularly mindless or make a color chart. Mixing paint is soothing. If I am feeling particularly dark, I can clean and organize, but usually I don’t have to go that far. My chaotic studio is a testament to my sunny outlook. The continuum is the key to keeping a positive attitude towards creativity.
What is your dreamy vision for your creative career and art practice three years from now?
In a dream I am making works that have never been seen before, works that express great beauty and truth and are created in a form I have invented.
The art has become a part of nature, indistinguishable from my environmental surrounds in how it looks and feels to those who encounter it. This work is expressed in a great installation in a large space, and I have total creative freedom with financial and physical support. I create with a freedom unfettered by human constraints, the materials are readily available, and I have the perfect amount of help with assistants who understand my concepts and are positively supportive.
How are you being kind to yourself as you look towards realizing your vision for your art career?
I make certain that I have plenty of stimulus. Stimulating input is found in what I read, art I see, friends I visit and travel; the kaleidoscope of the life I have created that sustains me as an artist. I have to seek and find this input as I live a quiet life in the country and even the perception of beauty can become dull with repetition. I take good care of the machine I have been given and sustain my emotional life with connection to those I love.
What are you fascinated with right now?
I am currently making sculpture that combines marble and fabric. I made some pieces as an experiment, a curator saw them, and gave me a date in his gallery to show more of these sculptural works. With a deadline for the show date, I am working in a new form (three dimensions) and my studio is half-lab with material experiments all over the place. Some fail, fall apart and get tried again. I am getting better; the work is accumulating and am happily engaged with the problem of making form and dealing with the aesthetics while not knowing 100% of the time what I am going to do next.
What advice would you give your younger artist self?
Dear younger Yura: “Don’t let your goal in life wait for later”. There was a period of my life when my babies were small, I was running a hectic business, I did not make art and lived remotely in the country.
This combination of life events consumed me and sank a dive-bomb into my career; I lost the thread. Once the business closed and the children got older, I emerged into space where I could make art again. I was determined to live as an artist again, and it was really hard work, much harder than when I first started out. Thinking about this today, I doubt that reading my advice would have changed my chosen path.
What are your tools for creative resilience these days? Do you have any methods to stay positive when life becomes difficult and perhaps when you have limited time to create?
Having a long career has given me the experience to know that going to the studio every day is the food I need in life. Because I know this, I go to the studio no matter how I am feeling in body or soul, and work. There is always something to do if I keep projects rolling. I can prepare a ground if I am feeling particularly mindless or make a color chart. Mixing paint is soothing. If I am feeling particularly dark, I can clean and organize, but usually I don’t have to go that far. My chaotic studio is a testament to my sunny outlook. The continuum is the key to keeping a positive attitude towards creativity.
What is your dreamy vision for your creative career and art practice three years from now?
In a dream I am making works that have never been seen before, works that express great beauty and truth and are created in a form I have invented.
The art has become a part of nature, indistinguishable from my environmental surrounds in how it looks and feels to those who encounter it. This work is expressed in a great installation in a large space, and I have total creative freedom with financial and physical support. I create with a freedom unfettered by human constraints, the materials are readily available, and I have the perfect amount of help with assistants who understand my concepts and are positively supportive.
How are you being kind to yourself as you look towards realizing your vision for your art career?
I make certain that I have plenty of stimulus. Stimulating input is found in what I read, art I see, friends I visit and travel; the kaleidoscope of the life I have created that sustains me as an artist. I have to seek and find this input as I live a quiet life in the country and even the perception of beauty can become dull with repetition. I take good care of the machine I have been given and sustain my emotional life with connection to those I love.
Find Yura Adams on Instagram
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