Fafnir Adamites: Artist Talk and Demonstration

Fafnir Adamites, a sculptor from Western Massachusetts, will be visiting Chapel Hill as an artist-in-residence at Level Retreat thanks to an artist grant from the Orange County Arts Commission. During her stay, she will be hosting this free artist talk and hands-on demonstration about her process. Fafnir uses traditional craft processes – such as feltmaking, weaving, and papermaking – to create starkly geometric pieces that serve as meditations on trauma and memory.

On her drive down to North Carolina, Fafnir made stops at several memorials – such as The National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial, Heather Heyer’s memorial in Charlottesville, and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice – to reflect upon their purpose and construction. She’s keenly interested in how people behave in public places of mourning, and how memorial design choices may not always be conducive to each visitor’s expression of anguish.

Fafnir’s pieces inhabit a similar space of relived memory by utilizing the same strategies as memorials – the negative space, the hard angles, the minimalist palettes. Her work grapples with the conflicts between contemporary versus utilitarian art, public versus private grief, and abstract design versus site-specificity.

Attendees of this event can sign up for a private tour of Level Retreat to see Fafnir’s work.