Phoebe Adams: Selected Works 1984-1989

Beaver College Art Gallery is pleased to present Phoebe Adams on Thursday, February 8, at the Beaver College Art Gallery, located in the Spruance Art Center.

The exhibit includes a selection of Adams’ work from 1985 to 1989 and is the first career summary for this artist.

There will be a public reception for the artist from 7:00 to 9:00 PM in the gallery. At 6:00 PM, immediately preceding the reception, Adams will give a lecture in the Little Theatre on campus regarding her work. Both events are free and open to the public.

Phoebe Adams has emerged as one of this area’s most prominent artists and in the past few years she also has achieved increasing national recognition. Her unique cast bronze sculptures, to which she has recently added copper and wood, are rooted in physiological phenomena, appearing by turns archeological and anatomical. They derive from the tradition of biomorphism as pioneered by Jean Arp, Joan Miro and, more recently, Louise Bourgeois. Adams’ sculptures evoke a wide range of associations with organic processes such as fossilization and decomposition and with natural forms such as shells, ammonites, human organs and bones, crustacean appendages, pods and cocoons. In her oeuvre images of growth and transformation are metaphors for psychic processes: the manner in which ideas grow, turn in on themselves and give birth to new thoughts.

“The presence of such an accomplished artist in our community warrants attention and recognition,” noted Beaver College Gallery Director Paula Marincola, “and we are very pleased to be organizing this overview of Phoebe Adams’ work.”

Adams’ work has been included recently in major exhibitions across the United States, including 1988’s highly regarded “Sculptures: Inside Outside” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the forthcoming “Sculpture on the Edge” at the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. For the Walker Art Center Adams also was commissioned to create a permanent public sculpture for their new sculpture garden, which includes works by most of the major sculptors working today. Adams is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grants. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Walker Art Center; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; the Guggenheim Museum, New York City; and both the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Represented by Curt Marcus Gallery, New York City, and Lawrence Oliver Gallery, Philadelphia, Adams teaches sculpture at Moore College of Art and at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.