ARTIST STATEMENT

I grew up in the garden, watching my parents tend to flowers, fruits, and vegetables. I watched them nurture something from seed, giving it water, soil, and sun. I watched them wait patiently as the plants grew and blossomed into something beautiful and nourishing. This is how I create my artwork: I take a seed and nurture it until it grows into something I could not have imagined myself.

I start with little idea of what is to come, allowing the journey and the process to guide me so the art can grow into whatever it is meant to be. To further this freedom in the process, I seek to work in collaboration with my materials rather than in command; we are equal contributors to the creation. I am drawn to materials like clay, handmade paper, and watercolor because of the rich life they contain.

My artwork contains visual motifs of floral and organic forms as a way to reference the lessons of creation I learned from my parents in the garden.

I often reference my childhood because it was a time in our lives when we were encouraged to believe in magic—and what is the creation of art, if not magic itself? This belief manifests in celestial imagery, with stars, moons, and whimsy ever present in my work.

My hope is that my artwork will act as a reminder that magic still exists, and that even in adulthood, whimsy fills the world—and what a joy it is to experience.

BIOGRAPHY

Adrienne is the daughter of a winemaker and a musician; she was raised in a home with a garden filled with flowers and fruit trees with plenty of books and art supplies at her disposal.

Although she always had a love for art, when she found herself at Syracuse University for college, her initial plan was to follow a more “traditional” path.  She quickly found herself unable to ignore her creative calling and by the start of her 2nd year had transferred into the School of Art with the intention of being an illustration major.

Before she could take even one illustration class she tripped and fell into a printmaking class and within the hour transferred programs.

The next three years were a beautiful yet exhausting creative journey filled with sleepless nights and tears of frustration and joy. She learned lots of things, like papermaking, numerous forms of printmaking, and a whole lot more much of which she has forgotten by now. She never grew tired of learning more, even when her art asked tedious tasks of her.

In 2016, She emerged with little direction or understanding of what was next and a BFA in printmaking, or so she thought.

A few months after moving back home, while she was working at an art store trying to figure out what to do with her life, Adrienne received a letter from her Alma mater questioning her absence from classes as she still had credits to fulfill before she could graduate.

Distraught, she begrudgingly enrolled in a ceramics class at a community college to complete the credits. (She had taken ceramics in college and was sure she didn’t care for it one bit.)

As fate would have it, she soon fell deeply in love with clay, and it consumed her.

In 2020 after a few beautiful and exhausting years in the ceramics studio, filled with tears of frustration and joy, Adrienne founded Spoon and Sprig Studio so she could share her love of ceramics and art with the world.

Over the past few years Adrienne has grown her business, sold her pottery at markets and online, had solo shows, given artist talks, and filled people’s hands with mugs and homes with art.

She continues to grow her creative practice and business in Lake Tahoe, where she lives with her boyfriend Dylan, her dog Tulip, and her Cat Cheeba. She works out of a small but mighty studio that she loves very much.