Dobree Adams

Dancing With Chaos

December 3 2003 - January 28, 2004

Weavings  & Photography

sponsored in part with a Grant from

The Kentucky Foundation for Women

   Dobree Adams, recognized as one of Kentucky's major contemporary fiber artists, weaves one-of-a-kind rugs and tapestries from her handspun yarns. For twenty years she has been raising sheep on her Kentucky River farm. She spins and dyes the wool from a rare breed of sheep, the Lincoln Longwool, and old British breed known in Kentucky in the 1930's and renowned for the curl, luster, strength, and length of its wool.

   Dobree Adams, who has had exhibition of her weaving in New York and Japan, has work in public and private collections in Japan, England, France, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and the United States. In Kentucky, her weavings are included in the collections of Labrot & Graham Distillers, the University of Kentucky Art Museum and the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives.

   She is an Exhibiting Member of the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen in spinning, dyeing, weaving and color digital photography.

   Through the years she has taken hundreds of photographs, primarily as 35mm color slides, to record the images she has gathered, at home on the farm as well as in her travels. these slides have rarely been used in the design process for her woven work, but rather to demonstrate the influences behind her work. In her slide lectures she has brought together images of her weaving and images of the landscape, but it was not until 2003 that she first exhibited her photography work. Photography heretofore has been a tool for her and this body of work a photo journal. However, in the last few years she has become more and more fascinated by photography and the thought of working in both fiber and photography.

Dancing With Chaos

   These images document this weaver's fascination for the contours of the landscape, for the colors and rhythms of the seasons, and how light changes both contours and colors.

   My weaving and my photographs are like Japanese haiku - there is a reference to the landscape, to nature, a reference to the season of the year; and a sense of transience or the impact of the moment. A single flower in bloom. A reflection in the smallest of puddles.

   These photographs are from a body of work begun in early 2003. I was enchanted with watching our farm pond change from day to day: the ice melting, the rare occurrence of algae in February and later in full bloom in March, the contrast of dormant grasses and fallen leaves with the ice and the water, the patterns of pear petals and maple seed pods blown by the wind. In June I was captivated by layers of different kinds of algae visible in the clear water of a couple of Michigan lakes. In September there was the changing light and an abundance of spider webs. In October I found a huge rock in a botanical garden in Asheville. This year as always I have been tracking reflections: in the pond, along the river, in puddles of all sizes

   Dancing with Chaos is an exhibition of weavings and photographs. I am excited about this unveiling of my photographs and about how the weavings and the photographs will play with and against each other and to see how showing them together can provide a greater comprehension of my vision.

Dobree Adams, 2004