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Temporary Art Review is a platform for contemporary art criticism that focuses on alternative spaces and critical exchange among disparate locales. Temporary is a national network, highlighting both practical and theoretical discourse through exhibition reviews, interviews, essays and features on artist-run spaces and projects. Founded in 2011 by Sarrita Hunn and James McAnally, with regular contributors Lauren F. Adams, Mairie Heilich, Carol Anne McChrystal, Francesca Wilmott, editor Clara Van Zanten, and regional editor Sasha Delai.]]>

HOUSE COAT is a site-specific installation that will take place in Spring 2011 in St. Louis, MO, and will involve the creation of a fitted spandex garment for a two-story, row-house organized by Cosign Projects and curated and assisted by Lauren Frances Adams. Andrea Carey of LA LA Land is helping Leeza Meksin organize the logistics of this public art installation, while the artist’s sister and filmmaker, Anya Meksin, will be video recording the installation process. The official opening will be on March 18, 2011 @ Cosign Projects. http://www.cosignprojects.net]]>

[/caption] Solo project of site-specific painting at the Luminary Center for the Arts. On Friday, February 4th from 6-9pm, Lauren Frances Adams will open The Nymph’s Reply, a painting-based installation that combines Elizabethan decorative tropes and John White’s watercolors of native Algonquin Indians as a vehicle for exploring American post-colonialism. An artist talk will be held on March 11. Finding inspiration in Sir Walter Raleigh’s pastoral poem of the same title, the installation is simultaneously visually seductive and chaotic, its aesthetic approachability belying the pedantic critique embedded within the wall paintings. The appropriated references are rendered by hand in the large-scale paintings, creating a surreal juxtaposition of previously disparate elements united by the artist’s process. The result is a barrage of collaged forms confronting the viewer with a dense symbolic field of multiple historical timelines and references, in an attempt to make sense of conflicting colonial narratives. Lauren Frances Adams currently teaches painting in the BFA program and the interdisciplinary MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis. She has exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; the Mint Museum of Craft and Design, Charlotte; the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; an ex-Turkish bathhouse in Belgrade, Serbia; Royal NoneSuch Gallery in Oakland, California, and CUE Art Foundation in Chelsea, New York. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and recently completed a residency at the Cite in Paris, France, July and August 2010. She is also a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Award. She has an upcoming solo project at Conner Contemporary in Washington, DC.]]>

Lauren F Adams @ Sweet Jesus Link to draft video of Sweet Jesus project from November, 2010. Completed video coming Spring 2011.]]>

Local Histories: The Ground We Walk On an exhibition of over 50 artists from across the U.S. exploring Alfredo Jaar’s idea that “place can not be global,” curated by artist elin o’Hara slavick + art historian Carol Magee, Professors in the Art Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. January 28 – April 29, 2011 OPENING RECEPTION: February 11, 5-9 pm 523 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 USA (formerly the Chapel Hill Museum) Hours: Tuesday-Friday 2-7pm; Saturday 12-7pm; closed Sunday + Monday Special Events: Performances by Cathy McLaurin, Neill Prewitt and Lance Winn March 18, 7 pm Mildred’s Lane Goes Elsewhere: a collaboration between artist J. Morgan Puett and Elsewhere, a living museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, a conversation, April 4, 7 pm Exhibition and events are free and open to the public. This inaugural exhibition at Chapel Hill’s new temporary art space at 523 E. Franklin Street addresses issues of histories and institutions of communities, family, place; commemorative responses; heroes; folklore and buried truths; traditions; memory/nostalgia; longing/loss; progress/development; the intersection of the local and global, and social, legal, political events as they pertain to, influence and construct local histories. The exhibition includes: videos about UFOs in Puerto Rico, the artist Barbara Hepworth and maize-based culture; sculptures utilizing tobacco, chairs, plaster snakes and a model of Michael Jordan’s childhood home; site-responsive and specific installations with red clay, vinyl window drawings and paint collected from local home renovations; paintings of the Middle East and surreal funerals; drawings of plants along the U.S.-Mexico border; interactive performances with bread and thermal imaging; photographs using gems as the negatives and of small towns in Germany, places in China, painters in the Hudson River Valley; and much more. This exhibition represents a unique collaboration between the Town of Chapel Hill and the UNC Art Department and features current and former students and faculty of the department as well as others from the region and across the country.  The exhibiting artists were selected from among over 150 applications.  Participating Artists: Alexis Bravos, Lauren F. Adams, Sophia Allison, Dave Alsobrooks, Patricia Bellan-Gillen, Erik Benjamins, Joshua Bienko, Lynn Bregman Blass, Molly Brewer, Ian Brownlee, Ann Chwatsky, María DeGuzmán, Lee Delegard, Travis Donovan, Jordan Essoe, Ashley Florence, Matthew Garcia, Gail Goers, Heather Gordon, Michael Gurganus, Elizabeth Hull, Brett Hunter, Michelle Illuminato, Michael Itkoff, Andrew Ellis Johnson, Ann Pegelow Kaplan, Susan Alta Martin, Mario Marzan, Cathy McLaurin, Morgan Muhs, Shaw Osha, Lillian Outterbridge, Freddie Outterbridge, Allyson Packer, Jessica Almy-Pagán, John Douglas Powers, Neill Prewitt, Susanne Slavick, Leah Sobsey, Spectres of Liberty, Tracy Spencer, Cici Stevens, Mary Carter Taub, Julie Thomson, Montana Torrey, Paul Valadez, Jeff Waites, Michael Webster, Cathy Weiss, Amy White, Ripley Whiteside, Lance Winn, Denis Wood http://www.facebook.com/LOCAL.HISTORIES.SHOW http://localhistories.wordpress.com/]]>

I have been awarded a commission at the St. Louis International Airport.  I will be traveling to Munich, Germany, to work with the Franz Mayer Company to create a triptych of glass screens for one of the airport concourses. Full news story here.]]>

Heal Dara G. Online auction is Monday November 29th–Sunday December 5th at 12 noon. Please bid.]]>

Sweet Jesus November 19, 2010 – November 20, 2010 Historic Lemp Brewery, St. Louis, MO www.sweetjesusstl.com Co-directed By: Lauren Frances Adams, Juan William Chavez, Jake  Peterson, & Kiersten Torrez ST. LOUIS, MO: 19 Contemporary artists from across the United States will be participating in one of the largest independent art events in St. Louis history.  33,000 sq. ft. and four massive, unfinished sections of Historic Lemp Brewery will house this two day event. Lemp Brewery will open its gates on Friday, November 19^th, at 7pm.  This two-day art exhibition features local and national installation, multimedia and performance artists. Sweet Jesus is organized by local cultural workers as a platform for focusing international attention to the unique resources and culture of the St. Louis independent art movement. Drawing its name from the found graffiti of former disenchanted youth that used the expansive brewery as an underground party mecca, Sweet Jesus attempts to recapture this energy in the form of a spontaneous 24 hour art happening.  Artwork will be installed on four sections and three floors of the raw industrial space that formerly housed the brewery’s ice house, storage, and processing facilities. Artists in this group exhibition include: Lauren Frances Adams (St. Louis, MO), Beacon Projects (New York, NY), Juan William Chavez (St. Louis, MO), Coble/Riley Projects (Copenhagen, Denmark  and New York, NY), William Gass (St.  Louis), Sarrita Hunn (St. Louis), Gregg Louis (New York, NY), Tim Ridlen (New York, NY), Mike Schuh (Chicago, IL), Ryan Thayer (St. Louis, MO), Kiersten Torrez (St. Louis, MO). Video selections by guest curators Laura Fried (St. Louis, MO) and Matthew Thompson (Aspen, CO). On November 19^th, there will be an opening party from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.  Performances by Beacon Projects scheduled at 7:30pm and 9:00pm will be broadcast live on the web.  Open hours on Saturday, November 20^thwill feature a discussion and walking tour with guest panel, inspirational sing-along, and mimosa toast from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Sweet Jesus, is organized by Lauren Frances Adams (Founder of Cosign Projects and Assistant Professor of Painting at Washington University), Juan William Chavez (Artist, Cultural Activist and Founder of Boots Contemporary Art Space), Jake Peterson (Assistant Curator of Cosign Projects and Lead Designer at Arsenal Studios), and Kiersten Torrez (Visitor Services Manager at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis). Guest curators include Laura Fried (Associate Curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis) and Matthew Thompson (Associate Curator at the Aspen Art Museum). The exhibition is on view Friday, November 19, 2010 7-10pm and Saturday, November 20, 2010 12pm-5pm. Admission is free.]]>

Presentation of new solo installation, Pearlclutcher, at South Carolina State University, Orangburg. Department of Visual & Performing Arts, South Carolina State University

The Decorative Unconscious: Newman, Rothko, and Ledgerwood Natasha Kurchanova, Who Is Afraid of Ornament? Katherine Daniels, Cultivating Beauty Lauren Frances Adams, (Not Safe for Home): Politics and Domestic Decoration Ruth Bolduan, Rococo Pattern, Decorative Order, and Modern Oblivion]]>