Forever In Your Debt Episode 2 with Kelli Rae Adams

In the second installment of a two-episode conversation, we learn about the life and career of kelli rae adams and her journey to becoming the important artist that she is today. kelli digs deeply into her background, the influence of her years in Japan, her work in ceramics and how she evolved into creating large-scale installations that delve into complicated yet important issues like student loan debt, gun violence, the climate crisis and over-consumption.

 

kelli rae adams

kelli rae adams utilizes clay in various states of permanency—often alongside additional materials—to create installation-based works that examine prevailing economic systems and explore our existing relationships to labor, currency, and value. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally at venues including MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design (Washington, DC), the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University (Providence, RI), and the Museum of International Ceramic Art (Denmark). She has been a fellow at the Halcyon Arts Lab (Washington, DC) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (Amherst, VA), and an artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO), Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, NM), the Studios at MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), and Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center (Denmark), among others. In 2019, she served as Arts Envoy to Honduras for the U.S. Department of State, lecturing and teaching in Tegucigalpa and jurying the XVIII Central American Sculpture and Ceramics Biennial. Most recently, she was a Fields of the Future Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan. Her study of ceramics began in Japan, where she apprenticed for five years with Tetsuro Hatabe, a master potter in the Karatsu tradition. kelli holds an MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA in Visual Arts and Spanish from Duke University.

About the art installation FOREVER IN YOUR DEBT:
“With this work, Adams connects the cost of her own education and the skills it afforded her while drawing attention to how labor is valued and highlighting the often wide gap between educational costs and earning potential. Through its participatory dimension, she asserts that the student debt burden and its social and economic ramifications affect all Americans. This sentiment is echoed by many lawmakers and activists calling for some degree of forgiveness and noting the entrenched forms of economic inequality perpetuated by the loan system, with first-generation college students and African American borrowers among those most adversely affected.”