Bramble

by Adrian Rhodes

Artist Reception
Thursday, May 7, 2026
from 5:30 - 7:00 pm

Artist Statement:

Creating work across a wide-ranging multidisciplinary practice, including printmaking, painting, sculpture, installation, and recorded performance, I explore how the repetition of deeply iconographic imagery and motifs reflects recurring, intrusive thought patterns. The repetition of compositional elements in new configurations reflects individuals' inability to let go and move on. I am interested in how the endlessly repeating nature of the work reflects patterns of thought and rumination. I focus on inheritance and its complications- both the physical inheritance of objects, and the psychological and emotional inheritance, both good and ill, of shared experience and generational trauma. This work is a meditation on grief, the passage of time, the fleeting nature of joy, and the struggle to hold contradictory feelings simultaneously. It is also about the people who should be in the room, and are not there-  It is about the presence of absence. In a world of instant gratification, the act of sitting with heavy thoughts and repetitive processes for an extended time becomes a statement in itself, bringing that act to the content and context of the work. 

The work is about the complexity of closeness- the desire to separate from your past and return to it in the same breath. It asks, “Who am I when I am not defined by my relationship to you?” 

To learn more about Adrian and her work, visit her website: Adrian Rhodes

Biography

Adrian Rhodes (b. 1983) of Hartsville, SC, received her BFA (2005) and MFA (2011) from Winthrop University. She is the recipient of the South Carolina Arts Commission’s 2020 Individual Artist’s Fellowship and the 2019 SECAC Artist’s Fellowship. Her work has been included in group exhibitions including Drawn: Concept and Craft at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston Salem, Paper Worlds at the Spartanburg Art Museum, both the 2019 and 2024 presentations of Coined in the South at the Mint Museum Uptown Charlotte, and two of Manifest Gallery’s group exhibitions: CUT: Works Made by or About Cutting (2021) and Kingdom: The Real and Imagined Animal in Art (2024). The McColl Center in Charlotte, NC, presented her work in two group exhibitions in 2024: Material Worlds: Winter/Spring Artists in Residence and Splinter and Seed: Function and Concept in Wood. Her work was presented in the Summer 2025 issue of Fiber Arts Now as part of Fiber Art Reimagined III. 

Rhodes is the winner of the 2020 701 CCA Prize from the 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, SC, and was featured in presentations of the 701 CCA SC Biennial in 2019 and 2021. Recent solo exhibitions include How to Untie a Tight Knot at 701 CCA, After the Ravens at the Spartanburg Art Museum, and End Figure at Mike Brown Contemporary in Columbia, SC. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at 701 CCA in Columbia, SC; the McColl Center in Charlotte, NC; Ramona in Houston, TX; and a winter resident at Penland School of Craft in Spruce Pine, NC.  

This exhibit is FREE, and the public is encouraged to attend.

This exhibit will be on display until May 22, 2026.

This exhibit is on display in the Coker Gallery.