Alumni Spotlight: Derrick Adams '03
The Alumni Spotlight is a place to hear from the School of the Arts alumni community about their journeys as artists and creators.
Derrick Adams is a multidisciplinary New York-based artist working in performance art, painting, sculpture, music and collage. His work focuses on the fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface, communicating and exploring self image and forward projection. Adams received an MFA from Columbia University and BFA from Pratt Institute. He is a Skowhegan and Marie Walsh Sharpe alum, and a recipient of a 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and 2014 S.J. Weiler Award. Since 2001, Adams has exhibited extensively, both nationally and internationally, including MoMA PS1, Brooklyn Museum of Art, PERFORMA ‘05 & ‘13 (commissioned by the Calder Foundation), Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, and the Birmingham Museum of Art. Adams’ work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Birmingham Museum of Art. His work can be seen in New York at Tilton Gallery; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Gallerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris; and online.
Was there a specific faculty member or peer who especially inspired you while at the School of the Arts? If so, who and how?
I do remember having very candid, constructive and motivational conversations with faculty member and artist, Rirkrit Tiravanija. His easygoing personality helped me to not care as much, to unwind and to step back and think about my work from different perspectives, which was helpful for me to trust in my own concepts.
How did attending the School of the Arts impact your work and career as an artist?
Naturally it helped me gain insight and intellect on critical issues surrounding my subject matter through conversations with faculty and fellow students. It also helped to align me within the structure of the institutional art world through visiting artists, critics and curators from notable institutions.
What were the most pressing social/political issues on the minds of the students when you were here?
School started a week before September 11, 2001, so its aftermath was pretty much in the air for the duration.
If you could revisit any piece you created during your time at the School of the Arts, which would it be? Why?
I did create a piece called “Play Things” in which I dressed small African figure sculptures in Barbie, Ken and G.I. Joe clothing. As the only black student in the program at the time, there were some difficult conversations. I think recent events have since primed the audience for such conversations.
What was your favorite or most memorable class while at the School of the Arts?
Film Theory.