Lullaby
A SOFT AND COMFORTING EXPERIENCE CREATED THROUGH VARIOUS MEDIUMS INCLUDING POTTERY, HANDMADE PAPER, AND PAINTING. WORK BY ADRIENNE BELAIR.
Gallery
Exibition Dates: April 22, 2024 – May 16, 2024
Artist Statement
When I was a child my father used to practice his guitar at night. He played jazz music and I remember the guitar sounded so warm. On occasion I would sneak out of bed, into the living room to find it transformed by a single blue light, and what was once so familiar felt like a new world. I always thought these songs where my own personal lullabies, but of course it was just a guitarist practicing while is daughter was supposed to be asleep.
I’ve held onto these memories tight, they are something I return too often when I seek a feeling I wish to evoke in my artwork, a feeling of calm, a world transformed.
Of course as we age our memories change, our nostalgia will revise itself, while we look onto our childhood with new eyes. This shift in reality is sometimes filled with sorrow but never the less it is important for us to decide how we will choose to hold onto our past.
Lullaby is a collection of artwork that has served as a safe space for me to process how those memories have changed over time, creating works of art that have provided the same soothing effect that those songs once did, and a decision to let those memories stay sweet.
These artworks span many mediums from clay, handmade paper, painting and other avenues of creation. Although these mediums vary they each embody techniques that evoke a meditative and calming experience, bringing a sense of peace and a road for me to find my way home to myself.
To create these artworks, I work in collaboration with my materials rather than in command. Listening to them and nurturing them, my hope is to allow them to tell me what they need so I can respond and help them along to their final form. The process is organic and allows my work to develop something unexpected, often abstract and inspired by our natural world.
Because my artwork serves as a soothing mechanism for myself I can only hope that this is translated to the viewer. Lullaby is meant to be a comforting and calming space, somewhere for one to sit in a transformed world and believe those lullabies where created just for them.
—Adrienne Belair
