Adrienne Wooster
Feature Artist Opening
AT THE COLLABORATIVE LAB
Thursday April 2nd, 6pm-8pm
508 Main Street, Warren
“For better or worse, I have a childlike romanticization for the world that won’t seem to die. So I make art about it.”
In my new multimedia series, Cathedrals from Pieces, I combine line drawing, painting and traditional collage into figurative and architectural works. These pieces aim to encapsulate that curious feeling we sometimes get between the doorway of dreams and the alarm clock — before we stumble out of bed and the subconscious (or conscious) instruction manual for how to navigate whatever the heck this all is, kicks in.
Since 2022, I’ve made work that explores emotional and spiritual integration, examining the idea that demons are only parts of our souls we try to cast out or bury — anger, rage, jealousy, grief, and regret. Now, however, I find myself drawn to making pieces that speak to joy (a strange and fleeting emanation), which is all the more challenging to honestly portray.
This new work is, in part, a response to my increasing cynicism and detachment — evoked especially while sitting in I-95 rush-hour traffic, inundated by billboards advertising a late-stage-capitalism fever dream of injury attorneys, drugs, politics, unattainable “beauty,” debt relief, credit card promos, quick gratification and fast food — messages further compounded in a torrent of social media misinformation, self-obsession (my own included) and comparison fueled by a relentless sense of righteous indignation and inadequacy (can you tell I’m battling my own misanthropy?).
When tracing, painting, and piecing together faces, bodies, and buildings, I notice the essence of people reemerging and a rawness in lines and material, and my amazement at what we create (in all of its flawed glory) reconnects me to a wonderment of things. After all, we’re masses of molecules that barely have a grasp on the nature of our own consciousness, twirling on a giant rock through the space-time continuum; and somehow we are able to have subjective experience, encompassing love, hate, and everything in between, and we’ve created coffee, cathedrals, synchrotrons, symphonies, and damn fine red wine. It’s all rather remarkable.
For better or worse, I have a childlike romanticization for the world that won’t seem to die. So I make art about it.
@adrienneverest
Discover more: https://linktr.ee/adrienne.wooster
Also on view, 16 Artist Collaborators :
Faye Silvia, Rick, Altergott, Rachel Rasnick, Sandy MacDonald, Melanie dei Medeiros, Adrienne Wooster, Michael Camara, John Gieg, Juliette Casselman, Chris Deschenes, Olivia Watson, Jamie Derr, Cheryl Dinsdale, Jill Makowski, Adèle Saint-Pierre & newest member, Andrew Desforges