Atticus Adams’ art is a meditation on memory, warmth, and the quiet poetry of everyday thresholds. Born in Oregon and raised in West Virginia, Adams draws from a personal history shaped by Appalachian craft traditions, family memory, and the familiar rhythms of domestic life. His work is rooted in happy summers spent with his grandmother, tracing the movement in and out of her screen door, a gentle hinge between indoors and out, shelter and sun.
Working with metal screen as his primary medium, Adams returns to that material memory both literally and symbolically. The screen becomes more than structure. It is a veil, a filter for light, air, and recollection. It holds absence and presence at once, much like memory itself.
Since living in the Yucatán, his palette has deepened through the use of authentic pigments traditionally used by the Maya. These colors carry the heat of the earth, the brightness of tropical light, and a sense of ancient continuity. Infused into the industrial grid of metal screen, they create a dialogue between past and present, softness and structure, intimacy and place.
Adams grew up surrounded by traditional folk art. Several members of his family were self-taught artists involved in crafts such as wood carving and quilting, giving him an early connection to handmade objects, material resourcefulness, and creative expression rooted in everyday life.
Adams studied at the Yale School of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and Harvard School of Architecture. His sculptures have been exhibited in institutions including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Akron Art Museum, The Mattress Factory, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, and The Frick Pittsburgh. His work is included in private and public collections worldwide.
