THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503090198
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Mary Ellen Riddle
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
There were no coloring books in Roberta Adams' childhood home. Her mother didn't believe in them.
Instead, Adams had wax to carve that was left over from canning. Her mother poured the unused paraffin into blocks, and her daughter would carve horses.
``My mother was an artist,'' said the 59-year-old Kill Devil Hills sculptor. ``She never allowed me to have a coloring book. She thought it was stupid. You listen to music, you listen to stories and you make your figures.''
Adams remembers following her mother into a meadow of flowers, where they'd paint watercolors. They also visited gallery after gallery, absorbing the art within.
``At first I was bored,'' she said. ``Then I started to like it. As I got older, I began to enjoy it more.''
Adams wasn't pushed to become an artist. In fact, her mother encouraged her to choose a more lucrative major in college. But she was not upset when Adams chose art as her life's work. ``I think she was almost gratified,'' Adams said.
Leaving her first medium, paraffin, behind, Adams fell in love with clay. As she works the earthy tan-colored stoneware, peace comes over her. The world goes away. She revels in the wet clay, molding emotional statements, using clay hands and heads as her words.
``I like earthy. I'm not into colors,'' Adams said. ``If I'm into colors, I paint.''
Sometimes Adams uses white to contrast her dark sculptures, but her glazing is primarily done with iron oxide.
The element is painted on and then rubbed off, wherever Adams pleases, with a wet cloth. The result is rich and yields a natural, uncontrolled look.
Various brown and brownish-red hues are achieved, some saturated, some more translucent.
The figures she creates are mostly female. Her skill in carving anatomically correct hands, heads and sometimes torsos is astounding. All the work is done by hand even though the accuracy makes them appear like casts molded from life.
``Everything is from a hunk of clay,'' Adams said. ``I don't even know how to cast. Anatomy is basic. Otherwise everything looks like sausages.
``Ever since I was a kid I did things. You do horses, every muscle, their eyes, the body. I've always been fascinated with the human body, and I actually find it in its pure form as quite beautiful.''
Emerging from the clay are strong hands, knuckles, stretched tendons, eyeless faces. ``It's almost like giving birth, actually,'' Adams said of the creative process. ``I get almost snappish. I don't want to be bothered.''
When Adams found a wooden pillar on the beach - a weathered, sandy, discarded column - she knew immediately how she would unite it with one of her clay heads to make an artistic statement.
``It was as real to me as this candlestick,'' said Adams, ``and I acted on it almost immediately. If I don't do it soon enough, I lose it. It will lose its impact. It will lose its whole thing.''
Viewers of her work have called it weird, deep, psychological stuff. Some have called it strong.
``I want to evoke an emotion. It doesn't matter if it's the same one I've had,'' Adams said.
She carves birds' nests and eggs and combines them with her figurative pieces. They're fundamental to Adams. It all has to do with the birth of beings and emotions, said the artist.
Adams says she creates from an unstructured mind. If she enters the studio with too tight a concept, it kills the flow from her creative wellspring through her hands.
From her clay-encrusted hands that move in a primal state come deep earthen messages - new hands to lie upon dark boxes, birds nesting in thought-provoking heads, healing psyches draped in clay-wrapped bandages, a cracked torso with lace pouring out, or a portrait of a deceased friend with a teacup once filled with friendship.
``We never, never stop growing,'' Adams said. ``The day I stop growing and learning, I'm going to lay down for that nap. It's one big cycle.'' And it all began with a hunk of leftover wax. MEMO: Mary Ellen Riddle covers Outer Banks arts for The Carolina Coast. Send
comments and questions to her at P.O. Box 10, Nags Head, N.C. 27959.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MARY ELLEN RIDDLE
Roberta Adams revels in working wet clay, molding emotional
statements, using clay hands and heads as her words.
by CNB