Opening Day

Encounters: Vadis Turner

Sunday, July 31 | 12 p.m. – 5 p.m.

View the Museum’s newest exhibition, Encounters: Vadis Turner.

After receiving her BFA and MFA at Boston University, Nashville-born artist Vadis Turner became fascinated by the possibilities presented by traditional handicraft materials to define and contradict conventional gender roles. Her mixed media work began with a debutante gown made out of wax paper from her mother’s kitchen. She continues to create works that transcend the commonplace from its intended function into a vehicle for social commentary. She observes, “Transforming domestic materials into contemporary art objects bonds me with ancestral forms of craft that determine a woman’s value, sexual worth and cultural identity. My time, like generations of women before me, is judged by what I make with my hands.”

Through exhibitions and residencies in France, the Czech Republic and Japan, Turner has deepened her vocabulary and expanded her perception of women’s work. She is both reviving and reinventing a function for handmade objects in a society with progressively fewer hands-on activities. Organized by HMA.