Yura Adams, Represented by Olympia, New York, New York
Selected Primary Exhibitions
2025 Companion, Olympia, New York City, New York, solo
2023 Turley Gallery, Extramundane, with Brian Wood
2022 Warm, Dark and Roaring, Olympia, New York City, New York, solo
2022 NADA New York Art Fair, solo presented by Olympia Gallery
2020 Unraveling, Opalka Gallery, as artist and curator, four-person
2019 Fast Earth, Courthouse Gallery, Lake George, New York, solo
2018 Solo Exhibitions, John Davis Gallery, Hudson, New York, also 2016, 2014, 2012, 2010, 2008,
2003: Yura Adams, Northpointe Gallery, Kinderhook, New York
1984: New Museum Window Installation, New York City, New York
1983: Solo Exhibitions, FOTO Gallery, New York, New York, also 1982 and 1978
1983: Yura Adams, Sioux City Art Museum, Sioux City, Iowa
1982: Yura Adams, Real Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut
Grants and Awards
2023 Tree of Life Grant
2022 Peter S Reed Foundation Grant by nomination
2021 Drawing Center Viewing Program
2019 Pollock-Krasner Foundation, individual artist grant
2017 Berkshire Taconic Foundation Grant, Martha Boschen Porter Fund
2010 Individual Artist Grant, New York State Council on the Arts DEC Program
2009 New York Foundation for the Arts, Mark Program Award
1985 National Endowment of the Arts, New Genres Individual Artist Grant
1984 Individual Artist Grant and Residency, Public Access Synthesizer Studio New York, NY
Residencies
2024 Chautauqua Visual Artist Residency
2022 Vashon Artist Residency with awarded fellowship
2019 Vermont Studio Center with awarded fellowship
2016 C Scape Dune Shacks Artist Residency, Provincetown, Massachusetts
2015 Artist in Residence, Trustees of Reservations, Naumkeag, Massachusetts
Most Recent Group Exhibitions
2025 Strohl Art Center, Chautauqua, NY
2025 Vassar College Art Library, Poughkeepsie, NY
2024 Front Gallery, Houston, TX, Mighty Small
2023 Train Show, Olympia, Great Barrington Train Station
2023 MASS MoMA: Artists of the Berkshires and Pioneer Valley, Turnpark Art Space
2022 Guided by Voices, LABspace, Hillsdale, NY: with Sharon Butler, Lucy Mink, Adrian Meraz
2022 The Border Project Space, Fiber Reveries, Brooklyn, NY
2022 LABspace, Mountain High, Valley Low, Hillsdale, New York
2021 Olympia, Dodecagon, New York, New York
2021: Hudson/Mohawk Regional, Opalka Gallery, Albany, New York
2021 Woodstock Art Museum, Far and Wide, Woodstock, New York
2021 Albany Airport, Sunrise/Sunset, Albany, New York
2021 Artspace, Modicum, New Haven, Connecticut
Major Collections
Capital One Art Collection, The Bunker, Chase Manhattan Bank and Seagram Seven
Education San Francisco Art Institute: 1975, BFA, Painting and 1980, MFA, Photography
My work is made with the mad pleasure of being lost in materials and not knowing the way to the other side. Each work presses out an interior vocabulary centered on what happens out in the natural surroundings within 800 feet of my studio (in the fields outside my window).
What I make is a full-blown response to being on this spot on the planet. My paintings, sculptures and installations contain real and imagined observations of nature, ever-present global warming angst, a dip into what I read, and forays into various compartments of seeing, sensing, and feeling. Each work is created with intuition and improvisation as I find form and imbue it with a narrative presence.
Bio:
Yura Adams is a painter known for her vision of nature observed within the immediate locale of her studio. She looks just outside her door at weather, insects, birds, biological growth and her work expresses what she sees through the foibles of her inner life. She embraces the exploration of materials and works with painting, sculpture and installation.
In 2025 Adams opens her second solo exhibition with Olympia in New York City of paintings and installation and will participate in Fields of Color at Strohl Art Center, Chautauqua, New York. In 2023 Adams exhibited a large group of sculptures at Turley Gallery, Hudson, New York in a two-person show. In 2022 Adams had her first solo show with Olympia and was also presented at NADA New York by the gallery.
Awards include grants from The Tree of Life (2023), Peter S Reed Foundation by nomination (2022), Drawing Center Viewing Program (2021), Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2019), Martha Boschen Porter Fund, Berkshire Taconic Foundation (2017), New York State Council on the Arts (Individual Artist Grant 2010), New York Foundation of the Arts Mark Program (2009), and National Endowment for the Arts (Individual Artist Grant, New Genres 1985).
Adams has an extensive exhibition record throughout the Hudson Valley with many solo shows with John Davis Gallery of Hudson, New York and other venues including Opalka Gallery in Albany, New York and LABspace, Hillsdale, NY. In the early part of her career, she exhibited as a visual and performance artist in venues on the east coast such as: Just Above Midtown, City Gallery, New Museum, Experimental Intermedia, New Music America, Real Arts Ways, Franklin Furnace and Foto Gallery.
She received her BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her studio is in an industrial building on a farm in Western Massachusetts.
Studio in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.