Adriane Herman
Adriane Herman currently monumentalizes other people’s “to do” lists, hoping to unlock the seemingly alchemical formula for translating intention into action. This effort to re-present evidence of human commitments, tastes, priorities, accomplishments, and procrastinations was predated by a body of ephemeral work designed to examine personal baggage and facilitate the permanent “checking” of some of that baggage. Linking works of divergent media is her ongoing interest in consumption, be it that which we consume consciously or non-tangible things we take on unwittingly and subsequently work to jettison.
Heman’s work has been included in books such as Printmaking at the Edge, The Best of Printmaking, and the upcoming Ingestation: What Art Eats. She has shown in recent group exhibitions at: Adam Baumgold Gallery (NY), Bryce’s Barbershop (Olympia, WA), chosen barren land (Tainan, Taiwan), The Dalarnas Museum, (Falun, Sweden), Portland Museum of Art (ME), and Western Exhibitions (Chicago). This year, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art and the Ulrich Museum in Wichita (KS) have hosted solo exhibitions of her work, which is also held in public collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Progressive Corporation, and The Walker Art Center. In addition to her Level II Certificate in the Wilton Method of Cake Decoration, Herman earned a B.A from Smith College, and an M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Her independent efforts to normalize consumption of fine art dovetail with her collaborative undertakings such as Slop Art dot com, and “Long Overdue: Book Renewal,” a collaboration between Maine College of Art (MECA) and The Portland Public Library that yielded 186 circulating artworks patrons can collect temporarily through local check out or interlibrary loan. Herman led an interdisciplinary print media program at Kansas City Art Institute at the turn of the century, and has collaboratively explored content in context with BFA and MFA students at MECA since 2002. She continues to seek gifts or trades of used grocery and other “to do” lists at P.O. Box 10011 Portland, ME 04104-0011.
