Alice Adams (born November 16, 1930) is an American artist known for her sculpture and site-specific land art in the 1970s and for her major public art projects in transit systems, airports, university campuses and other urban sites throughout the United States since 1986. Her earlier work in tapestry and woven forms was important in the American fiber art movement. Biography Adams grew up in Jamaica, New York and in 1953 graduated with a BFA in painting from Columbia University. Following graduation, she went to Aubusson, France to study tapestry weaving and design at L'Ecole Nationale d'Art Decoratif. Except for two years spent in France, Adams has lived in New York City, traveling for collaboration and consultation on public art projects in the United States and abroad. There have been several stages in her eclectic career. Career Tapestries and woven forms After completing her studies in Aubusson, Adams returned to New York in 1956. She brought a tapestry loom from Aubusson to weave her own designs, but her practice began to depart from traditional tapestry technique. Working on what conventionally had been the back of the tapestry, she developed surface articulation and added materials like rope, sisal twine, and found objects to the traditional wool and cotton surface. She and other innovators, like Lenore Tawney, Claire Zeisler and Sheila Hicks, moved weaving off the loom and into the realm of three-dimensional form. Her work was part of the influential "Woven Forms" exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in 1963. In 1963 Adams began using tarred rope, chain link fence and steel cable in sculptures that preceded the use of such materials by other artists. She discovered various knotting, looped structures used in sailor's knots and techniques for covering ship's railings, but enlarged the scale and the materials traditionally used. In 1966, Lucy Lippard included three examples of this work in "Eccentric Abstraction," the exhibition she curated at the Fischbach Gallery in New York City. The sculpture in this exhibition ran counter to the minimal "primary structures" of Robert Morris and Sol LeWitt, suggesting more intuitive and idiosyncratic approaches. The show included Louise Bourgeois, Bruce Nauman, Eva Hesse, Frank Viner, Donald Potts, and Gary Kuehn, most of whom were showing in New York for the first time. Sculpture Adams' sculptures after 1968 explored the architectural elements of the wall, the corner, the column and the vault. Continuing the use of