Mémoire de l'Avenir

Adrienne Lee - Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head? steel sculpture - Van Every / Smith Galleries of Davidson College

Adrienne Lee - A landscape of your mind - photography - 2020

Adrienne Lee - A neural Environment (detail) - Three-panel piece - mixed media - 2020

Adrienne Lee in her studio

Interview of Adrienne Lee

by Florence Valabregue

Spring/summer 2020

Adrienne Lee - who crosses disciplines and continents - Europe, Asia, America - is a final year student in art and neuroscience at Davidson College in the United States and, like many of us, she has had to change the course of her projects to adapt her studies and her art to the constraints imposed by COVID_19.

Can you tell me more about your résumé?

Your education?

I am a rising senior in Davidson College, studying studio art as my major and neuroscience as my minor in my liberal arts school. My younger self really enjoyed keeping a count of schools I had attended. If my current count is right, Davidson is my 12th school. I am unsure how others might interpret my lifetime schooling.

Your passions ?

I love sharing a memorable time with others; I think there is a lot to learn from the passions of others. When I reflect on my memories with them, I express those moments genuinely in my art. I am passionate about bringing about such truth in my studio process.

Your life ?

My nomadic life history now compels me to blend into the lifestyle of others within a community. The question, “where are you from?” has always seemed less significant than a formal greeting. My core values derive from multiple cultures and my core beliefs stem from hardships I have had to face when moving across borders.

You mixed Arts and neuroscience

How did you come to study both?

Combining visual art and neuroscience was the Eureka moment of my journey as a student. My interests in neuroscience started as a hobby until I realized I had cultivated a personal voice in visual art.

What implications does neuroscience have on your art?

In what way(s)?

As a neuroscience enthusiast, I cannot professionally nor rightfully speak for the modern brain research; however, I translate fractions of neuroscientific knowledge into art. While the subject matter of the artwork adheres to the original idea I had gained from neuroscience, I am interested in refining and transforming the artwork to its unique identity. I have yet to create and finalize a full body of work that reflects the process above, but some of my recent, individual works have shown some of that maturity.

How the two disciplines enrich each other?

I think the general public might view the process of combining art and neuroscience as two parallel streets. I argue that the two disciplines combine into a full circle. As much as I rely on neuroscience as the starting point of my works, I rely on visual art by means of expressing and materializing my emotions and reactions to the specific knowledge in neuroscience. I often find myself reverting back to few basics in neuroscience before proceeding to paint, and vice versa. When in front of my artwork, the viewer encounters themselves, like a reflection in recursion – or at least that is what I aspire to generate through my works.

When the coronavirus crisis started, you were studying in Davidson College, USA.

What were you studying ?

I had mentally prepared for this past semester in Davidson since the semester before, when I had been studying abroad in Denmark. I anticipated heavier workload in studio art especially due to my capstone class for my studio art major. I was in the midst of creating a solid artist identity. While my workflow was interrupted by the circumstances of COVID-19, I found a newer way to embrace my creative personality.

What were this crisis practical implications and more specifically on your studies at Davidson College?

Your travels?

I had originally received Fujita grant from my college to travel to France for an art project I had personally formulated. I also had other potential opportunities in United States to visit venues of cross-disciplinary research in visual art and neuroscience. I remember feeling devastated when I knew my constructive plans that I had prepared for months in advance would be cancelled. It is an odd feeling to travel back in time – before COVID-19 – and to remind myself the kind of ambitions I wanted to fulfil for this year.

Your solitary confinement?

I do not think I have ever been more honest with myself. Whether cooking, reading, jogging, or making art, the daily activities I completed for myself felt truer to my personal definition of satisfaction or happiness in general.

Your art ?

I wrote a short work of prose for Davidsonian – my college’s online journal – and I think this might provide you with more insight

Did you use new techniques ?

My techniques centred on the viscosity of materials, such as fluidity of watercolor and acrylic paste or other soluble media. I was primarily inspired by compositions I observed in nature which I recorded as photographs.

New inspiring subjects ?

I have recently re-immersed myself into literature in neuroscience which led me to notice neuronal forms in nature, replicated in the arboreal environment. I recently started a collection of photographs of trees. I am by no means a photographer; I regard these photographs as a personal diary.

Could you show me some of your production?

See attached portfolio.

Would you say confinement constraints were positive or negative? Can you explain me in what way?

I was making art in solitude: under the duress of social distancing and in an indescribable freedom of re-organizing my thoughts. I was making art in my dormitory room, so my artistic exploration was much more limited than in a typical art studio. I don’t think my “new normal” was particularly positive or negative; I found a newer potential in my art practice to incorporate collage materials into a hybrid work of drawing and painting. I would not have been able to re-appreciate my interests in complex compositions had I not had the amount of patience while being alone.

www.adrilee.com

www.davidsonian.com