Russell Robert Adams

                                                      RUSSELL ROBERT ADAMS

Born February 3, 1943, in Stillwater, Texas, to Geneva Mae Petty and Robert Preston Adams, parents who gave this only child a storybook upbringing in Abilene.  Mom was the consummate housewife: cornbread maker, family organizer, church worker, and sometime bookkeeper for an oil company.  Dad was a butcher and then a window decorator (“a profound influence on my 'graphic eye' and its development.  All that crepe paper cut into ribbons and stapled throughout the form of what was being presented in a particular Rexall drug store window display of Alka Seltzer, Old Gold cigarettes, Breck shampoo etc. in small towns across west Texas”.) 

Making stuff looked like fun. 

And so was the art spark lit in the boy who delighted in traipsing across the  mesquited and oil-pumped plains with Warren, in search of  stone tools and the accompanying real or imagined histories. Those early interests took root and stuck with Russell:  wood and sticks, rocks, found objects, which all morphed into love of desert landscape, archaeology, ancient and modern cultures, shape and color and design.  Art, baby. 

After Abilene High School (1961) and a start at Arlington State College, there was a summer job at the glorious Bandelier National Park in New Mexico,  cleaning trails and frequenting the Three Cities of Spain bar on Canyon Road with Roy.  And then Russell somehow found himself off to San Francisco Art Institute (BA, 1966), from the sticks to the big time.  California left him with lifelong artist friends as well as a painting opportunity at the summer program of Yale Art School in Norfolk CT.  This SFAI period was sadly culminated by a horrifying auto accident which left him with some metal and a gimp leg for the rest of his life. Recuperation in Abilene attended by “Mamma, darlin'” and  graduate school at University of Oklahoma in Norman (MA, 1969), with an emphasis in  film, followed. 

Russell was offered some extraordinary opportunities over the years: a recommendation for  a Guggenheim fellowship (not followed up), acceptance by the Peace Corps (declined).  He did accept a grant from the Wurlitzer Foundation (1974), where he was given an idyllic place (Taos, NM) to make art and more friends. 

Never one for practicality, Russell held numerous short-lived teaching positions at various colleges and universities.   Eastern Washington State College, Cheney, WA; Pittsburg State College, Pittsburg, KS.  University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he taught film animation (1978) and found a second wave of artist friends and colleagues.  Eventually, substitute teaching for Albuquerque Public Schools, grades 6-12, as a supplement to art income. 

His work had rather quickly developed into an abstracted format, and he was continuously represented by numerous New Mexico galleries (notably, Janus in Santa Fe and Cafe and Exhibit/208 in Albuquerque,). 

Russell was not a self-promoter; not capable of “marketing”.  Nothing artificial in his work ethic, either.  Like many good artists, he possessed a naive approach; do what comes naturally to you.  No fancy supplies; mostly found and repurposed, cheap materials. 

Attempting to describe an artist's work is a fool's mission, but I can mention the many mediums used by this one:  acrylic paint, watercolor, ceramic (tiles), xerox, digital, wood, steel, plastic (jewelry), wood- and linoleum-cuts, rug design, bronze door pulls, tee shirts, postcards, paper and Sharpies (drawing, drawing, and drawing).  All forms of visual art were interesting to Russell, and he had no qualms about trying something new.  The bulk of his work is in painting and in small painted wood sculptures, reflecting a deftness of color sense, texture, sensitivity to shape and all aspects of a piece;  his work always feels “light”, even though layering and sanding and finessing were part of his process. 

Russell moved to his house on Arno Street  in 1983 (with a little help from Ray G). For the past twenty-plus years, his family has been the neighbors in this old downtown area off Broadway and his accumulated community of artists, primarily those who condensed around Exhibit/208 gallery and Thirsty Eye brewpub, which, serendipitously, was located three blocks from his house and provided a daily destination for Coca-cola  and conversation. Russell was an unacknowledged docent for the gallery, not shy about talking to anyone who would listen to him about art.  He felt a responsibility to drag the uneducated or even uninterested into the glories of looking at art. He crossed paths with famous artists and unknowns, Ken Price and the guy selling retablos on the street.  Looked at their respective creations with the same eye.  Widely informed, academically, he could talk art yak-yak with the best, but was undeterred at giving each piece his full thoughtfulness. 

In the past few years, he found new friends at the Barelas Community Center; neighbors Victoria and Dennis made sure he got there for huevos when he could no longer drive. 

Buckminster Fuller, who ostensibly kept every piece of paper he touched from a certain age on, had nothing on Russell Adams.  RA's artist's house was filled with his own and others' art work; filled, as in hung, stacked, piled, leaned, grouped, boxed.  Each item an artifact.  You knew each object meant something to him; his large, even, unfussy handwriting on the back side (detailing where, when, what significance), bursting with enthusiasm.  Also, there were collections of postcards and letters, sent and received; books galore (art of any and all types, architecture, history, poetry, biographies, etc); photographs; fishing gear, enough rocks to sink the house, cameras and photography paraphernalia, tapes and CDs of his beloved jazz, and of course every scrap of found wood or paper or wire or plastic that might be converted into a piece of art.  Junk mail apparently a special manna:  no security envelope, with its ready-made interior design, escaped once it came through the mail slot  at Russell's; it was torn into 4”x4” pieces, stapled in to little booklets, which he carried in his shirt pockets (along with Sharpie pens) and filled with sketches, organo-geometric designs, exuberant and engaging. 

Russell is generally known, at least in later years, as the guy who could insult people without knowing it, with his childish, selfish outlook (the one that also enabled him to have a fresh art eye).  But it is not generally known that he always  gave to anyone on the street who asked him. 

Russell loved his parents dearly, and Abilene, and his favorite cousin Patricia Gayle. 

He died October 4, 2024, from stroke complications.  He was 81. 

A memorial is planned at Exhibit/208 gallery, 208 Broadway SE, Albuquerque NM, 2:00pm, January 11, 2025, among a good selection of his artworks and, without a doubt, a whole lot of friends. 

It will be wonderful if any of you can post memories or thoughts on this website, so that we can all revel in the phenom that was Russellbob.