Exhibitions
LAUREN ADAMS: ONEIRIC
Tri-Star Arts / 4450 Candora Ave., Candoro Marble Building November 20, 2026 - January 23, 2027 (Reception: November 20 5:00pm - 8:00pm)
Lauren Adams
Tri-Star Arts is pleased to present the next exhibition in their Golden Chain Gallery project space located at the historic Candoro Marble Building. Oneiric Expanse by Lauren Adams (Knoxville, TN) opens Friday, November 20, 2026 and will run through Saturday, January 23, 2027. This show is located within the unique architectural space of a narrow wooden stairwell.
An opening reception will be held on Friday, November 20, 2026 from 5:00 until 8:00 pm (artist in attendance). The address is 4450 Candora Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37920 and admission is always free of charge. Visitors should drive only on the crushed gravel driveway and parking lot surfaces. Driving vehicles on the lawn is always prohibited.
Oneiric: (adjective) Of or relating to dreams; suggestive of dreams
Expanse: (noun) A large, open area of land, water, or sky that can be seen all at once
"When I look at the marks we leave in our place of rest, I see shapes reminiscent of clouds and geological formations. Through this lens, I paint a series entitled Nocturnal Landscapes. I imagine that in our dreams, we travel through abstracted landscapes that can be both familiar and new. I like to think about how we are in two places at once: asleep in our beds and traversing a dreamscape. When I paint Nocturnal Landscapes, I honor these dualities and enjoy blurring the line between the realistic and the abstract. In Oneiric Expanse, I wanted to dissolve reality by painting the place where I had rested and using mirrors to create a distorted and infinite reflection into the dream world. I like that the mirrored film distorts the painting, reflecting ripples of light and fading the image between sections. It’s not a perfect reflection like a glass mirror would have been. This adds to the sleepy, dreamlike experience of reality dissolving. The distorted reflection of the realistically painted Nocturnal Landscape creates a memory of the original painting. This memory is much like trying to describe a dream to someone after you’ve woken up."
"I knew immediately when asked to create a piece for the Candoro Marble Building stairwell that I wanted to experiment with an idea I had for using mirrors to reflect a painted Nocturnal Landscape. I use reflected images from Nocturnal Landscapes as source material for its sister series, The Dream Vortex. By using the site-specific physical space and new materials, I could honor both series through a new way of creating. I began the process of Oneiric Expanse by creating a small, not-to-scale replica of the space. I then cut wooden boards to fit the risers of each step. I wanted to honor the Candoro Marble Building and its history by making my own gesso out of sizing granules and marble dust. Marble dust is a byproduct of cutting marble and has been used to make gesso for hundreds of years. I love how the marble dust gesso enhances the vibrancy of the colors. I shot reference photos and selected and cropped a single image to create a composition that would extend vertically up the stair risers. Essentially, I then painted a 132-by-20-inch painting, but because it was too large for my space, I couldn’t paint it all in one piece. I chose to screw three panels together at a time for continuity. Eventually, I hung them in two vertical rows on my studio wall and worked on them in larger sections for final highlights and shadows. The mirrored surfaces were created by covering the boards for the stair treads and the panels for the walls with mirrored film. It was important not to harm the historic building, so I created a skeletal wooden structure behind the mirrored walls that use opposing pressure and gravity to keep them from falling inward. The film on the panels doesn’t produce the perfect reflections of cut-glass mirrors. Instead, the reflections are wavy and imperfect. I feel like this adds to the infinite dream aspect of the narrative. The final step was assembling the panels, treads, and painted risers and adding lighting to illuminate the reflections and colors. A massive thank you to my husband for countless hours spent discussing the construction of this project, offering honest critiques during the painting process, helping me assemble it, and being my number one supporter of all my crazy ideas."
- Lauren Adams, November 2026
Lauren Adams is an East Tennessee-based wife, mother, bibliophile, music lover, and oil painter. She earned her BFA in Art Education with a concentration in Painting from the University of South Carolina and spent 20 years teaching visual art in East Tennessee public schools. She now focuses on her painting, using archival and classical oil painting methods, and is creating sister bodies of work: Nocturnal Landscapes and The Dream Vortex. Through Nocturnal Landscapes, she explores what defines a landscape, while The Dream Vortex explores the journey into the subconscious dream realm. Lauren is represented by dkGallery in Marietta, Georgia.
