Yura Adams is a painter known for her abstract and energetic works inspired by natural sciences. Her interdisciplinary career is based in the San Francisco Bay area, Lower East Side of New York City, the Hudson Valley and currently Western Massachusetts. Adams has exhibited as a painter, and intermedia artist including performance art in venues such as The New Museum in New York, Experimental Intermedia, Franklin Furnace, New Music America, Real Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut, and is represented by the John Davis Gallery of Hudson, New York. Adams has received these grants: National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist, Berkshire Taconic Foundation, New York Decentralization, and was a regional representative in the New York Foundation of the Arts, Mark program. She recently received a fellowship to attend the Vermont Studio Center and opened a one-person show at The Courthouse Gallery, Lake George, New York.
Published on February 21st, 2020. Artist responses collected in months previous.
What projects are you working on right now?
My interest in using science has continued to evolve and I recently initiated a new studio project that has delved into earth science. The barrage of bad news about climate change was the trigger and I began to speculate on the redesign of earth we have initiated. I am developing a body of work titled “Fast Earth” that interprets our future planet using an earthy palette and inkjet prints in combination with paint. I just received a Pollock-Krasner grant and am at this moment plotting out the work schedule for “Fast Earth” over the coming year.
How do you keep yourself accountable in your practice?
I have a PIV (pushy inner voice) that keeps me going to the studio and producing. It is a kind of metronome that does not let me rest too long. Once there and working PIV moves to production, then back to home office for professional development. It is not so much an issue of keeping myself accountable as salving the PIV.
How do you stay motivated to pursue your creative work?
Ideas are my great fuel … if I can keep the studio fire at least on a simmer, the ideas roll in and I am off. I find my ideas from studying mostly and observing. For example, a recent body of work that focused on the physics of light got started when I encountered a patch of red light late in the day. I wanted to know more and that curiosity set off a long relationship with the ideas I discovered. The world is full of things that make me wonder and I like to make work about my wondering.
Where do you hope to be 10 years from now and what would you like to say to yourself?
Ten years from now I hope to be a lot further in my professional development and be immersed in an ocean of creative people. What that will look like depends on how inventive I am, and developing that aspect of being an artist is very interesting to me. In ten years, I would like to say to myself, “I feel pretty good about the work I created over the past ten years. I used my voice, did not get sidetracked by anything, worked hard, and above all stuck my neck out.” I also hope to say:” I love the community I live in.” For me, community is not defined by geography, but by minds.
What projects are you working on right now?
My interest in using science has continued to evolve and I recently initiated a new studio project that has delved into earth science. The barrage of bad news about climate change was the trigger and I began to speculate on the redesign of earth we have initiated. I am developing a body of work titled “Fast Earth” that interprets our future planet using an earthy palette and inkjet prints in combination with paint. I just received a Pollock-Krasner grant and am at this moment plotting out the work schedule for “Fast Earth” over the coming year.
How do you keep yourself accountable in your practice?
I have a PIV (pushy inner voice) that keeps me going to the studio and producing. It is a kind of metronome that does not let me rest too long. Once there and working PIV moves to production, then back to home office for professional development. It is not so much an issue of keeping myself accountable as salving the PIV.
How do you stay motivated to pursue your creative work?
Ideas are my great fuel … if I can keep the studio fire at least on a simmer, the ideas roll in and I am off. I find my ideas from studying mostly and observing. For example, a recent body of work that focused on the physics of light got started when I encountered a patch of red light late in the day. I wanted to know more and that curiosity set off a long relationship with the ideas I discovered. The world is full of things that make me wonder and I like to make work about my wondering.
Where do you hope to be 10 years from now and what would you like to say to yourself?
Ten years from now I hope to be a lot further in my professional development and be immersed in an ocean of creative people. What that will look like depends on how inventive I am, and developing that aspect of being an artist is very interesting to me. In ten years, I would like to say to myself, “I feel pretty good about the work I created over the past ten years. I used my voice, did not get sidetracked by anything, worked hard, and above all stuck my neck out.” I also hope to say:” I love the community I live in.” For me, community is not defined by geography, but by minds.
Find Yura Adams on Instagram