Art Emerging from Spiritual Questions

by Ray Waddle

With raw materials like porcupine quills, glass beads, human hair, and strings of restless spiritual questions, artist Adrienne Outlaw pays homage to God.

Outlaw, based in Nashville, is a force on the fine arts scene, and known for her unusual art designs, intensity of purpose and generous sense of responsibility to the viewing public.

She collaborates with non-artists (engineers, homemakers, high school students). She advocates for the public role of art. She brings a probing mind to questions of religion and life.

It’s in her Presbyterian blood.

“I talk to a great number of people who fear art — they feel stupid about it, or it intimidates them, or they don’t get it,” she says. “As a Christian I want to be a steward of what I do and invite people into it. If they feel ownership about it, they’ll fear it less and get enjoyment out of it.”

A conversation with Outlaw is likely to bounce around from astrophysics to churchgoing to James Joyce to motherhood. (At 32, Outlaw and her husband hope to start a family next year.)

Her art ranges from the deeply personal to the public. She has created works about nature subjects, religious ideas and feminist themes of domesticity and emotional life. Several recent objects are festooned with hundreds, if not thousands, of colorfully beaded sharp metal straight pins, a mixed message of feminine beauty and emotional fierceness, intimacy and fear of intimacy. Among her public art works, a web-like mobile hangs at the Edwin Warner Nature Center in Nashville called “Web of Life,” saluting the intricate artistry of a spider’s web. She produced a mobile for the children’s area at Nashville Public Library, called “The Prince,” based on Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s book The Little Prince.

At her church, Second Presbyterian Church in Nashville, she has taught kids about expressing their religious feelings and values through artistic work. One recent Outlaw work, called “Heaven or Hell,” is a photo emulsion set on velvet, with beads and pins. It suggests a difficult journey leading to the light, inspired by C.S. Lewis’ book The Great Divorce.

“In Lewis’ work, people are in hell but they don’t realize it,” she says. “They don’t have to be there, but they just can’t admit there’s a higher power. I was interested in that very difficult path you might have to take to get to the good.”

She recently returned to school for a Master’s degree at Vanderbilt University, a generalist course of study that allows her to explore connections between her art and faith, literature, science. “I’m personally just a big believer in questions,” she says. “I’m wanting to find a better connection between intellect and religion. What’s the purpose of this planet? What does it mean to say there’s a God out there? I want to meld religion and art and express my love of God.”

Outlaw’s work will be featured in a major exhibit at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville called “The Art of Tennessee.” The exhibit, running Sept. 13-Jan. 18, spans 10,000 years of art in the state, stretching back to early Native American expressions. Outlaw is one of 25 current Tennessee artists whose work will be featured.

“She has a great sense for finding beauty and surprise in very different materials,” says Mark Scala, Frist exhibitions curator. “When you see an exhibit of hers, you never know what to expect. She is very dedicated to her ideas, her work processes, the intellectual and physical forms they take. They are often incredibly labor-intensive. There’s a very different feeling to the sort of work that takes a lot of time and skill to produce. And that’s part of her message.”

Outlaw’s passion is to draw viewers closer to a work of art, encourage them to linger, get emotionally involved. She worries that Americans are too busy to slow down and savor the everyday possibilities of beauty. A piece called “Iris,” a funnel-like object with a small portal to look through, invites the viewer to take a peek. When you look inside, you confront a tiny mirror reflecting your own eye staring back. “I’m trying very much to get us to slow down and discover there are moments of joy when you do,” she says.

These days Outlaw is gearing up to commence a vast new art work, a structure or shelter shaped by more than 2 million straight pins. The armature structure will suggest conflicting emotions, a mix of beauty and danger. “It represents the conflict I feel between what we do as humans and what we ought to do,” she says. “It will be made in such a way that the ribs of the steel armature will suggest human ribs or a Gothic cathedral. But then there’s all these needles.”

“Shelter” will likely be 8 feet tall, 3 feet wide, and take months to complete. “There will be a whole lot of people helping — we’ll have a nice talk and do pins,” she says.

Outlaw works full-time in her studio, has lectured widely and exhibited her work actively for the last decade or so. She is also a freelance visualarts journalist for WPLN, the public radio station in Nashville.

If fund-raising plans succeed, she will create a large outdoor chess set for the Nashville Chess Center. Art, intellect and fun will meet. “It will definitely be interactive,” she says. “If people don’t see it as art but as a big chess game to play, that’s great. I encourage everyone to find whatever way they can into art.”