Yura Adams is a painter and installation artist who reports on her perceptions of a world drawn from the poetry of nature. Recently she expanded her work into three dimensions and exhibited a large show of sculpture at Turley Gallery in Hudson, New York in April 2023. Fall 2022 she presented her paintings and installation in a one-person exhibition “Warm, Dark and Roaring” at Olympia in New York City who now represents her. The exhibition included a monograph of her work. In 2022, Adams was presented at NADA New York Art Fair by Olympia and exhibited at LABspace, Hillsdale, New York. Awards include grants from the Tree of Life Foundation (2023), 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 Genres1985). 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. She paints in an industrial building on a farm in Western Massachusetts.
Published on March 3rd, 2024. Artist responses collected in months previous.
What are you working on these days?
I am working on a series of small paintings that use an ai generator as one of my sources. I input my photographs into the ai image generator, and the output is used as a beginning point in my paintings. This is in addition to paintings I am making with large, cutout shapes that increasingly address my observations of seasonal change. I also have smaller sculptures working, using ceramics and casting, new skills that are slowly developing.
What has been going well for you in your art career and life recently?
Last two years have been very busy. I had my first one person show in New York City since the 80’s and produced my first monograph to accompany the exhibition. The exhibition was reviewed by White Hot Magazine, and I am now represented by Olympia. I started making sculpture and exhibited it in a new gallery I find very exciting in Hudson, New York. The amount of work I produced for both shows pushed me into new territories in the studio. I received a Tree of Life grant last summer. I started physical training and now enjoy my teeny muscles, but they are the first ones I have ever had! Being stronger has helped with the long hours in the studio. The best thing that happened is that my oldest daughter married and is expecting!
What is something new that you have discovered this past year that is meaningful or helpful for you?
This past year I began to input into a data base the plants and birds I encounter on the farm where I live and work. The accounting has increased my understanding of the nature in this spot where I work and deepened my connection to this inspiration. In addition, the expression I discovered working in sculpture revealed a personal commentary that has always been there but became clearer in three dimensions. Another big discovery this year evolved through stretching my skills. In practice I learned a lot more about creating casts, took a course at Smooth-On to learn more and studied ceramics so that I can create my own sculptural forms.
Briefly walk us through your process of making art or thinking through a new project, focusing on what's most important to you as you create.
An important aspect of how I create is the way multiple but focused information sources flow into my interpretation. My sources are what I see and record with a camera, the records I collect such as my data base of information about plants and birds and seasonal change, and what I read: mostly about nature and those who have also been inspired by it. What is important when I pick up my tools is the search to interpret this mass of information into personal clarity. I must invent and find a unique visual solution through the practice of making. My projects evolve through doing and I have found over time that making multiples of an initial idea reveals the directions most clearly.
Is there anything else that you would like to share with our readers?
As an artist who has been active for many years, my experience has shown that I feel most successful as a human when I have connection with people I love and other creatives, and when I am making something that has no map, no previous example and I am finding my way through an ambiguous stew of ideas and images to create a new work. For me, this is fulfillment. This fulfillment has cost me security, and to a degree part of my health and life-experience, but I consider my life as an artist an incredible gift of living that somehow, I discovered, or more accurately was given to me. I live in gratitude for this gift.
What are you working on these days?
I am working on a series of small paintings that use an ai generator as one of my sources. I input my photographs into the ai image generator, and the output is used as a beginning point in my paintings. This is in addition to paintings I am making with large, cutout shapes that increasingly address my observations of seasonal change. I also have smaller sculptures working, using ceramics and casting, new skills that are slowly developing.
What has been going well for you in your art career and life recently?
Last two years have been very busy. I had my first one person show in New York City since the 80’s and produced my first monograph to accompany the exhibition. The exhibition was reviewed by White Hot Magazine, and I am now represented by Olympia. I started making sculpture and exhibited it in a new gallery I find very exciting in Hudson, New York. The amount of work I produced for both shows pushed me into new territories in the studio. I received a Tree of Life grant last summer. I started physical training and now enjoy my teeny muscles, but they are the first ones I have ever had! Being stronger has helped with the long hours in the studio. The best thing that happened is that my oldest daughter married and is expecting!
What is something new that you have discovered this past year that is meaningful or helpful for you?
This past year I began to input into a data base the plants and birds I encounter on the farm where I live and work. The accounting has increased my understanding of the nature in this spot where I work and deepened my connection to this inspiration. In addition, the expression I discovered working in sculpture revealed a personal commentary that has always been there but became clearer in three dimensions. Another big discovery this year evolved through stretching my skills. In practice I learned a lot more about creating casts, took a course at Smooth-On to learn more and studied ceramics so that I can create my own sculptural forms.
Briefly walk us through your process of making art or thinking through a new project, focusing on what's most important to you as you create.
An important aspect of how I create is the way multiple but focused information sources flow into my interpretation. My sources are what I see and record with a camera, the records I collect such as my data base of information about plants and birds and seasonal change, and what I read: mostly about nature and those who have also been inspired by it. What is important when I pick up my tools is the search to interpret this mass of information into personal clarity. I must invent and find a unique visual solution through the practice of making. My projects evolve through doing and I have found over time that making multiples of an initial idea reveals the directions most clearly.
Is there anything else that you would like to share with our readers?
As an artist who has been active for many years, my experience has shown that I feel most successful as a human when I have connection with people I love and other creatives, and when I am making something that has no map, no previous example and I am finding my way through an ambiguous stew of ideas and images to create a new work. For me, this is fulfillment. This fulfillment has cost me security, and to a degree part of my health and life-experience, but I consider my life as an artist an incredible gift of living that somehow, I discovered, or more accurately was given to me. I live in gratitude for this gift.
Find Yura Adams on Instagram