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March Issue 2009
North Carolina
Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, NC, Features Works by Kelly
Adams
North Carolina artist and designer, Kelly Adams believes that images have the power to affect society. Bottomlands, a manifestation of that belief, as well as a longstanding and ongoing body of work about environmental and water related issues, will be exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences' Nature Art Gallery, in Raleigh, NC, from Mar. 6 - 29, 2009. As the title implies, the subject of this work is native wetlands. The drawings, paintings and other mixed media work in this exhibit are based on her experiences living and working in the swampy, low lying areas of eastern North Carolina for the last twenty years.
Adams says she was inspired to draw wetlands because water is a basic life sustaining element and she recognized these low lying swampy areas as one of the few truly remote places left to eastern North Carolina. "The quietude of these spaces reveals a unique relationship, a conversation if you will, where a place speaks to me," says Adams. "As an element of nature ourselves, we are not separate from it. From these meditations I then reflect, question and respond to the place within my work."
Using charcoal, graphite and mixed media she utilized her skills as an artist to illustrate the unique beauty of these remote areas while also trying to promote their preservation and educate us as to their importance. "I believe we must cultivate a new paradigm that respects the complexity of indigenous landscape and recognizes the importance of our relationship to it." Half the land area of the state is represented by wetlands which serve to replenish the water table by slowing the flow of water, filtering and cleansing it. They also act as barriers to flooding and buffers to storm damage. Unfortunately, their value is often misunderstood or ignored and the result can be destruction or exploitation of these sensitive areas.
Adams earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from East Carolina University School of Art and Design where she currently holds the position as the Media Center Director. She has been exhibiting her work since 1993 and exhibited Bottomlands in 2007 at the North Carolina Estuarium in Washington, NC. That same year, she was awarded the North Carolina Arts Council Regional Artist Project Grant.
For further information
check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the gallery
at 919/733-7450, ext. 360 or visit (www.naturalsciences.org/store/nature_gallery.html).
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