Vadis Turner transforms domestic materials into abstract paintings and sculptures. Charged with cultural significance, behavioral expectations and expressive possibilities, Turner’s materials are manipulated into forms where they contradict their intended function or traditional gender association. Resisting categorization, Turner’s work occupies spaces between textile and painting, craft and sculpture, wall and floor, feminine and macho.
Turner received a BFA and MFA from Boston University. She was awarded the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2016. Her first solo museum exhibition, Tempest, was at the Frist Art Museum in 2017. Turner’s work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, 21C Hotel & Museum, Hunter Museum of American Art, Tennessee State Museum, Kentucky Arts and Crafts Museum and the Egon Schiele Art Centrum. Selected group exhibitions include the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY; Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN and Cheekwood Museum, Nashville, TN. She has been an artist in residence at the Museum of Arts & Design, NYC, Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY and Hambidge Center, GA. Turner has an upcoming fellowship at Vermont Studio Center, VT in 2021. Turner is represented by Geary in New York and Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, TN.
For more information, please see: www.vadisturner.com, Geary, Zeitgeist Gallery, and on Instagram @vadisturner.
Vadis Turner, Red Gate, 2018. Braided bedsheets, dye, acrylic, resin, wood, mixed media. 118 x 120 x 10 inches. Photo: John Schweikert.
First, and most importantly, how are you doing? How are you navigating the highs and lows?
I am ok. Everyone has been leveled or moved or devastated or awakened by something this past year. Recently Nashvillians, like myself, got an extra slap on the heart when a bomb went off downtown. I live five blocks away from where it exploded. Our home wasn’t damaged, but our vulnerability and spirit are rubbed raw. That was less than two weeks before a mob invaded the Capitol.
As for the pandemic, having a deadline during the first seven months was a miracle. Creating new work for my show in New York got me through the murk. After long days of home-learning and home-adventuring with my two sons, working late nights in the studio kept my identity intact. I made enough work for two shows. I am hugely thankful that my exhibition, Cups and Grids, was presented in real life at Geary in September. Honestly, I am grateful that doing this work is my real life.
Recently, I’ve been experimenting in the studio, re-organizing and archiving older works. Revisiting my undergraduate paintings and early mixed media sculptures is a mixed bag, simultaneously affirming and embarrassing. What Professor Peter Hoss said is true, my subject matter has been right under my nose the whole time. Reflecting feels like an important thing to do right now. I am also designing a storage system for my bedsheet megaliths and other large pieces. It’s basically a temperature-controlled pizza rack that’s easily bigger than my first apartment. In some ways that feels like progress, but again, its mixed.
Cups and Grids installation image, Geary, Sept 2020, NYC. Photo: Hannah Deits.
It would be great if you could briefly talk us through your practice. Understanding it is integral to appreciating the multivalence of your work.
My subject matter comes from braiding together research, visual ambitions, and personal or generational experience. Once the conceptual and compositional priorities are identified, they are partnered with domestic materials, often textiles, that have the potential to speak in some way. The forms are edited into expressive elements. The materials are manipulated so that they contradict their intended function, physical nature, or traditional gender association.
The studio days vary from being creatively charged, to meditative, to tedious. I collect, dye, sew, stuff, join, separate, re-position, sweep the floor and sit a lot. I’ve been working with used bedding for years, but recently introduced leather, mineral wool and cement into the conversation. I like that these materials are domestic, but not necessarily feminine.
The finished works are never what I initially imagine. Sometimes you are in charge, sometimes the work bites back. But finding channels of silent communication is a beautiful thing.
Vadis Turner, Bedsheet and Cement Vessel, 2020. Bedsheets, cement, dye, resin and thread. 13 x 12 x 11 inches. Photo: Hannah Deits.
Vadis Turner, Encrusted Bedsheet Vessel, 2019. Bedsheets, burnt wood, resin, acrylic paint and mixed media. 24 x 20 x 18 inches. Photo: Hannah Deits.
Has any of your imagery shifted in a reflection to what's currently happening? And why, or why not?
Last year, I wanted to investigate Brutalist Architecture and the biology/behavior of moths. I wasn’t sure where the intersection was, or if there was one, but being homebound during the pandemic helped me to engage with the tensions between weight and flight, austerity and vulnerability, systems and unruly-ness.
I loosened the concepts and resisted the urge to comb through all the tangles. The works aren’t polished or pretty. This shift in my process resulted in a series of limp grids and wobbly vessels. I hope the works embody the stirring times in which they were created.
Vadis Turner, Ghost Megalith, 2019. Bedsheets, leather, buckwheat, pillow stuffing and mixed media. 144 x 86 x 8 inches. Photo: Wes Magyar.
What are you reading?
I listen to audiobooks in the studio and recently finished The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain. I read poetry aloud in my car while I wait to pick up my sons at school. The carpool line isn’t the best place to get visibly emotional, but the take-away is better than Instagram.
Ghost Megalithin process, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist.
What is bringing you solace, or even joy, in this moment?
Breakfast, oh-so early, with my two little boys.
Where are you?
At home in Nashville…..which looks more jungle-like than it did before the pandemic. I officially have too many plants. My husband said he got stuck in a shrub while climbing the stairs.
Vadis Turner in the studio, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.