TEXTS and WRITING

Artist Statement, 2011

Cite Residency Proposal, Paris, France (2010)

Needle Work catalogue, Q&A with Lauren Adams (2010)

Needle Work catalogue, LARGE SAMPLE (2010)

Past Perfect, Present Tense Exhibition Statement for the Des Lee Gallery, St. Louis, by Lauren Adams (2009)

Past Perfect, Present Tense Class Blog (2009)

Bailout Biennial Artist Statement (2008)

Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grantees, 2007 catalogue selection (2008)

Jungle Tender Project Statement (2006)

Slowing Down the Gang Project Statement (2006)

Rat Fink's Revenge: The Custom Monster Collection catalogue selection (2006)

Crowd My Landscape Project Statement (2006)

Hair Piece Statement (2006)

CROSSCURRENTS catalogue selection, North Carolina Museum of Art and the Mint Museum of Craft & Design (2005)

Bread & Bullets Project Statement (2005)

"Our generation arrived after the utopia had been accomplished, after the cooling off of the nuclear explosion. Radioactive fallout has descended, and we have rediscovered ourselves in a post-utopian world. It is our task to describe the state of mankind, of the world and of our own psyche in this post-utopian world."

--Ilya Kabakov  


As an artist who grew up in a rural area of the American south, I am inclined in my work to explore issues of labor, class, the aesthetics of rural experience, and American domesticity. Visualizing typical domestic situations allows me to discuss the ways in which we insist on surrounding ourselves with objects of both comfort and terror. I utilize the historical decorative arts and realistic figuration in art history as a vehicle for these explorations in drawing and painting.

I am interested in making images as a way to display cultural values, class, and political beliefs. I employ visual humor to highlight the discrepancy between the illusion of what we want to be and what we actually are. Strategies of appropriation are at the core of my practice, and historic archival research is a large part of my process. I am particularly drawn to representing situations that take to task American consumerism, nationalist military defense, and political identity. I sometimes use my own image and body as a way to personalize (and internalize) these struggles.

I aim to slow down a capitalist sense of time by making art ‘products’ with a shelf life: wall paintings (which are painted over after the exhibition) or expendable consumer items (paper plates, butcher paper, cheap fabric, vinyl). I hope to elevate and prolong the ephemeral (albeit briefly) so that we may recognize the absurd impulses in our own behavior.