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Through February 3, 2008
West Valley Art Museum is host to an exhibition of Red Adams’ art from December 14 through February 3, 2008. Entitled “Photograms”, the works themselves differ from photographs which the artist says “record life lived, tracing the marks of a culture”; while Photograms “serve as an actual tracing, or shadow, of these forms, imbedded in silver, as in a handprint or fossil.” The objects in this art form are placed next to the light sensitive film not in a camera recording the light bounced off the form.
Having the outward look of a near x-ray the large images (some eight feet high) have an ephemeral feeling that makes viewers feel as though they might be seeing the recording of a ghost made by investigators of the paranormal.
Adams admits that “the intention of my work is to bridge or serve as a conduit between life lived and what could be. I focus on the links between traditional aspects of our human heritage and contemporary life experience. What remains of this lived experience, be it bone, stone or petroglyph, is my resource. Ushering visual evidence of life processes into a reorganized visual/physical form provides clues, perhaps even an oracle.”
Her record of exhibitions and honors for her work is extensive. She is Professor Emeritus, at California State University. She was a graduate in the ‘70’s of University of California, Irvine. She has had solo exhibitions recently in Jalisco, Mexico and Santa Rosa, California. In 2000 Adams was the recipient of the Marin Art Council Individual Artist Grant, Unrestricted Fellowship in Photography.
The installation in the Jensen Wing gallery will be on display through the holidays ending on February 3, 2008.