HOVLAND — Painter Gina Adams started out her art career with a very different focus.
She grew up with an artistic family. Her uncle worked as a muralist and she painted and drew with her grandmother.
Then, when she went to visual arts college, her style shifted to huge canvasses with New York-style graffiti.
“I never in my life would think that would become refined down to painting birds and teacups,” Adams said. “But it was a drastic shift that all comes down to playing with color.”
Next to her easel, artist Gina Adams keeps several paintings on display for inspiration. Several feature her theme of birds on or near a teacup.
Teri Cadeau / Duluth Media Group
About 10 years ago Adams found herself in her studio space with little inspiration. She’d inherited a bunch of teacups from her grandmother and from her great aunt’s tea shop. One of them sat on a shelf in the studio, and she decided to paint it.
“It was one of those days where I just wasn’t sure what to paint, but I had to get something under my belt. So I thought I’d just do a quick still-life study with the cup,” Adams said. “When I started painting the teacup, I just unlocked something in my mind. It just clicked and I just instinctively put a bird on it. And I liked it.”
She had several styles of inherited teacups to choose from as she continued to paint and explore. But Adams needed more birds. She started with painting the birds that would come to her feeder, but she wanted more of her own reference photos to work from. When she moved to Hovland a few years ago, she started taking walks in the woods to watch for birds.
“I found that going to in the woods and spending time there alone was very good for me, so I just kind of kept doing that,” Adams said. “I take all my own reference photos because I just feel like it’s important to work with birds that I’ve kind of had an interaction with.”
Adams said she doesn’t have a hard time matching the bird to the teacup. It just comes instinctively. She usually starts the painting with the cup, then matches a bird to the cup. But there have been times where she’s had to wait for the right bird to match the cup.
“It just kind of sits there and I’ll go through my bird pictures. Some of them just work. There’s not really a process there, it’s just whatever seems to fit at that time,” she said. “I’ve also started branching out with bigger birds and putting them on like a double-stacked cup or a teapot and it’s been a whole new world.”
A large peacock that artist Gina Adams saw on a trip to a zoo shares space with her daughter’s bird painting in their Hovland home.
Teri Cadeau / Duluth Media Group
Adams said she wasn’t sure exactly what drew her to combining feathers and finery, and she said she wants to leave her works open to interpretation.
“One woman put it in a way I really liked. She bought a couple of paintings and said they ‘sparked joy,'” Adams said. “I love the idea of having something light and delicate and beautiful. You can project your own life story on it. I want to leave it open for somebody to just enjoy.”
Her work can be found at the Cook County Craft Market every Saturday in the summer from May to October, along with the Hovland Arts Festival and Grand Marais Arts Festival and Art Along the Lake. A few of her tea towel and potholder prints can also be found in the market at the Dovetail Cafe in Duluth.
Teri Cadeau is a features reporter for the Duluth News Tribune. Originally from the Iron Range, Cadeau has worked for several community newspapers in the Duluth area, including the Duluth Budgeteer News, Western Weekly, Weekly Observer, Lake County News-Chronicle, and occasionally, the Cloquet Pine Journal. When not working, she’s an avid reader, crafter, dancer, trivia fanatic and cribbage player.