Adrienne Outlaw explores the often conflicting dialog among science, nature and religion. Exploring a world she sees as beautiful yet dangerous, nourishing yet cruel, Outlaw considers the contradictions that develop as people grapple to balance the dichotomy between emotional and intellectual thought in an increasingly technological world.

Manipulating and reassembling naturally protective materials, such as porcupine quills, human hair and beeswax, with industrial products including metal, plastic and high-tech fabrics, Outlaw references emotions “best contained in polite society.” Understood in this light, the works reveal our fear of the unknown and our desire for transcendence.

This emerging artist has been recognized with grants, fellowships and inclusion in several museum and public art collections throughout the United States including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Colorado, the Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama and the Cheekwood Museum in Tennessee. Her work was also recently commissioned for the U.S. Embassy's permanent collection in Abuja, Nigeria.

Outlaw's work has been reviewed in Sculpture, Art Papers and Fiberarts magazines and featured in books including Creating Traditions, Expanding Horizons: The Arts in Tennessee History; Faith and Vision: Twenty-five Years of Christians in the Visual Arts and The Art of Tennessee. Outlaw has guest taught and lectured at schools and museums including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, SUNY Stony Brook and the Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Outlaw holds a BFA from the School of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MLAS from Vanderbilt University.

Fecund Series

Fecund Series Statement

Beauty - Power - Danger - Cruelty. Our instincts/emotions bind us to our primeval past while technology separates us from the more “disdainful” aspects of the natural world. Still, products of nature demand our respect and admiration. Nature has evolved ingenious methods of survival in the way porcupines grow quills, spiders weave webs and plants protect and spread their seed.

I manipulate and assemble objects I admire -- cicada shells and sweet gum fruit, porcupine quills and beeswax, puffer fish and horse chestnuts -- into new forms. Careful selection of materials and the laborious attachment methods relate to obsession, protection and unification. The objects I choose once offered protection. Recombined, they speak to the human desire for progress and the possibility of Frankensteinian horrors.

These vulnerable forms require shelter. Acting as both specimen case and incubator, funnels covered with materials ranging from leather and velvet to wire and wax allow their contents to be viewed but not touched. Viewers become participants in the work when they peer inside a piece and see their reflection.

E-mail TAG about this artist: art@tagartgallery.com

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