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Artshack Gallery is pleased to present Absorbing the Storm, a solo show by our winter 2023
artist-in-residence Adrienne Elise Tarver.
Through a new medium of ceramics, Adrienne Elise Tarver explores her interest in root systems and the complicated structures that grow beneath us, in the dark. In these new sculptures, she is inspired by mangrove roots, the most identifiable feature of the unique and durable trees that protect tropical coasts, straddle fresh and saltwater, and provide home and refuge to a complex ecosystem. They absorb the ejects of increasingly destructive tropical storms. Her interest stems from their resilience, and presence in the tropics which has long been one of the core subjects of her work. The mangrove tree grows its roots above ground, making visible the complicated network and stabilizing structures that normally go unnoticed. The resulting ceramic structures started with ideas of mangrove roots, but are also influenced by global architecture and braided or bound hairstyles. She also explores the multiple meanings of “roots,” a word that also speaks to ancestral origins, and connects to the cultural resiliency responsible for today's diasporic Black identities, and the unseen roots connecting peoples across continents.
Adrienne Elise Tarver is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker with a practice that spans painting, sculpture, installation, photography, textiles, and video. Her work addresses the complexity and invisibility of black female identity from the history within domestic spaces to the fantasy of the tropical seductress to the archetype of the all-knowing spiritual matriarch. She has exhibited nationally and abroad, has been commissioned for numerous projects including the New York MTA, the Public Art Fund, Google, and Art Aspen, and has been featured in online and print publications including the New York Times, Forbes, Brooklyn Magazine, ArtNews, and Hyperallergic, among others. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and BFA from Boston University.
McKendree Key founded Artshack in 2008, and turned Artshack into a nonprofit in 2016. McKendree is a professional artist with over 20 years of teaching experience. She is a native New Yorker and taught art with Studio in a School for 8 years. She has taught workshops at Socrates Sculpture Park , P.S.1, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. She taught art education at Pratt Institute for 3 years. She holds an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from Colorado College. She studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Scultpure, and has exhibited her work at P.S.1, The Sculpture Center, CUE Art Foundation, The Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Socrates Sculpture Park, and The Brooklyn Museum, among other venues. In 2023, McKendree founded Keepsake Gallery, a space within Artshack where she leads and exhibits collaborative art projects with community members and kids. photo: Gabriela Herman
Artshack Gallery is pleased to present Absorbing the Storm, a solo show by our winter 2023 artist-in-residence Adrienne Elise Tarver. Through a new medium of ceramics, Adrienne Elise Tarver explores her interest in root systems and the complicated structures that grow beneath us, in the dark. In these new sculptures, she is inspired by mangrove roots, the most identi able feature of the unique and durable trees that protect tropical coasts, straddle fresh and saltwater, and provide home and refuge to a complex ecosystem. They absorb the effects of increasingly destructive tropical storms. Her interest stems from their resilience, and presence in the tropics which has long been one of the core subjects of her work.
The mangrove tree grows its roots above ground, making visible the complicated network and stabilizing structures that normally go unnoticed. The resulting ceramic structures started with ideas of mangrove roots, but are also in uenced by global architecture and braided or bound hairstyles. She also explores the multiple meanings of “roots,” a word that also speaks to ancestral origins, and connects to the cultural resiliency responsible for today's diasporic Black identities, and the unseen roots connecting peoples across continents.
Adrienne Elise Tarver is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker with a practice that spans painting, sculpture, installation, photography, textiles, and video. Her work addresses the complexity and invisibility of blackfemale identity from the history within domestic spaces to the fantasy of the tropical seductress to the archetype of the all-knowing spiritual matriarch. She has exhibited nationally and abroad, has been commissioned fornumerous projects including the New York MTA, the Public Art Fund, Google, and Art Aspen, and has been featured in online and print publications including the New York Times, Forbes, Brooklyn Magazine, ArtNews, and Hyperallergic, among others. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and BFA from Boston University.
