I’ve got good news for explorers: You don’t need a hot air balloon anymore to travel across the world. Instead, you can join InLiquid Artist Bobbie Adams on an adventure to a faraway place in her exhibition, Remembering China.
Bobbie Adams is a printmaking and papermaking artist. Her pieces combine the abstract with naturalistic colors, and she draws inspiration from personal experiences and the reality of the world around us.
Site Editor Kim Minutella accompanied Bobbie on a journey, where the artist gave a small glimpse at what to expect on our quest to China:
Kim: For your exhibition, Remembering China, you produced a series of work that focuses on your experiences during your visit in China. Can you tell us a little bit about your time there, and what it was about the landscapes in China that inspired you the most to create this body of work?
Bobbie: “The work in this exhibit was really assembled around the idea of China, rather than produced to directly represent what I saw. Some were done before I ever knew I would get to China, and some a good deal after I went. What was so remarkable there was how the ancient and the current coexisted so close together, and that you could really live in both worlds which are so unalike. I was only there briefly but I imagined the lives of the artisans and workers who created the Wall, and painted the scrolls, and made paper as we still make today.”
Kim: Often times, visiting a new and unfamiliar place is an extremely emotional and unforgettable experience. What would you say was most challenging for you in trying to convey the emotions you felt during your trip to China in your series of work for this exhibition?
Bobbie “My work has almost always been about an idea of something, rather than actually reproducing an image of what I had seen. So if I’m thinking of a place, such as China, and I want to explore it in my art I have to find an essence to go after — vastness, motion, power, stillness, or quiet, for example.”
“My travels are largely introspective, and I don’t really have to go anywhere at all. My goal isn’t so much to portray explicit emotions as to just set something down. The viewer has to take it from there. “
Kim: Would you say that this body of art differs greatly from some of your past works that you have made, such as in terms of style or even the type of emotions projected in the pieces?
Bobbie: “My work for a long time has been complex and laborious and full of layers and indirect images. This body of art is a good representation in general of what I do, and when I do it well, the pieces are usually evocative.”
Not only is Bobbie an adventurous artist, but she is a collector as well, in which she gathers real-world applications around her, and uses that information as a part of her process.
Bobbie added as an afterthought: I collect words and thoughts that I like, the idea of them or even the sound of them. I write them in small journals that I keep all over the place, and recently came across this quote by author Henry Miller that I really really liked and that expresses what my work is all about and where it comes from: “The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
Embark on a quest with Bobbie Adams in her exhibition, Remembering China. There will be an Artist Reception on September 11, from 1 – 4 pm at the 3rd Street Gallery, located on 45 N. Second St, Philadelphia.
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