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Adrienne Simmons is a visual artist and designer living and working in Houston, TX. She explores cartography and found materials to address themes of loneliness, loss of place, and memory, and its parallels with the landscapes of her past. Drawn to real and imagined landscapes, she uses abstract imagery in an attempt to understand how memories are embedded into spaces and places. She has shown in galleries, museums, and art fairs around the Houston area while pursuing her MFA at the University of Houston (2024).
Here’s my CV.
My practice employs found paper, domestic textiles, cyanotypes, and cartography to address themes of memory and its parallels with the landscapes of my past. I seek to understand the impact of humans on the environment and the loss of natural habitats, species, and memories associated with these places. Memory is an integral part of my work, as I am interested in the fallibility of memory, while also being curious how I can retain the memories of the landscape.
I’ve recently learned of the Welsh word hiraeth which translates as “distance pain.” Not a nostalgic yearning, but the pain of loving a place and how people will link a memory to a landscape. This way of thinking of a landscape and memory forms my most recent work. The materiality of this work, combined with the visual references found from satellite images, scientific data, and research documents help me establish a link or a record to a space, place, or time. Ultimately, the work helps me anchor memories and reconcile my hiraeth.