Vanessa Adams
Vanessa Adams
Website:
https://vanessascholaradams.com & https://vanessaadams.bigcartel.com/
Instagram: @vanessa_adams_prints
Bio: Vanessa Adams is an artist from New Orleans, LA working in Pittsburgh, PA. Vanessa is a founding member of the New Orleans Community Printshop and worked for 7 years creating innovative community arts programming with a tight-knit collective of printmakers and photographers in New Orleans. Vanessa was a curator and contributing artist to the Slow Holler Tarot Deck, a collection of tarot cards by southern / queer artists. Currently Vanessa co-organzies the Queer Ecology Hanky Project with Mary Tremonte, and collaborates with their partner Andrea Narno on Birds of Paradise Press. They have done residencies at Women's Studio Workshop, Penland School of Crafts, and Anchor Archive. They love listening to audiobooks, growing plants, and foraging for mushrooms in the woods of PA.
Artist Statement: Vanessa Adams is a printmaker from New Orleans, LA working in Pittsburgh, PA. In their recent work, the life cycles of night-blooming plants and the phases of the moon serve as visual signposts for stages of growth and transformation. Long associated with magical states of being, witchcraft, and subconscious feelings, night-blooming plants like Datura, Angel Trumpet, and Lotus provide entryways for queer magic. The moon’s cycles, which shift tides, sway emotional landscapes and guide the planting of seeds, suggest possibilities for change and opportunities for rituals and healing. Bringing together icons of magic and cycles of growth and decay, creates a visual language to explore how to inhabit places of darkness, how to harness intuition in the face of the unknown.