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Webs/ Drought Summer / Spider Creek

During the drought of autumn 2024 in the Hudson Valley, the hollow around a dwindling creek got covered in large spiderwebs, over precious mosquito hunting territory.
Intricate weavings stretched across grasses and small trees, are festively visible just for a spell, by angled morning sunrays.
Part of a series exploring transforming local landscapes over time. We visit at dawn, in awe.
The female orb spider spins different silks for weft and warp. At night she devours the web, and after an hour's rest rebuilds her world anew, recycling the proteins, using yesterday's exact anchors, attuned to land and wind.

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Coming up 2026:

March 8-April 11, 2026: Every Woman Biennial, Pen and Brush Gallery, 29 E 22nd St, NYC​

​March 2026: Tonic: A Medicinal Flora and Fungi Exhibit, Ghost Gallery, Seattle, WA

 2026 Land Art Makers at Land Art Collective

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Recent exhibits:

May 9-25 2024: 'Pitch Pine Pollen: A Transforming Forest'  Photography & Scent Art exhibit at Olfactory Art Keller  ​

Aug 8- Sept 14, 2024 - Scent as a Creative Medium at Olfactory Art Keller​​​

Dec 6, 2024 : Byrdcliffe 5x 7 Exhibition

Nov 5- Dec 7, 'Matriarch' group show, Maspeth, curated by Erin Perrazzelli 

2025 Byrdcliffe Artist in Residence Show, April 19-May 15, 2025

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My photography explores threads of dialogue with nature, in immersive and reciprocal ways. Landscape is subject not background, inviting interaction. Recent projects include series of local wild places wandered and closely observed over years and seasons, transformed by climate change and human activity. Themes include environmental language and abstraction, deep ecology, belonging and witnessing, 
at times the human form in nature. 
Olfactory art pieces and natural perfumes are inspired by landscape stories and connection with flora and fauna felt thru the senses and transforming cinematically over time. Link to olfactory art & perfume site.

​My work has been exhibited at Olfactory Art Keller NY, Hammer Museum LA, Institute of Art and Olfaction LA, New York Open Center, Romanian Cultural Institute. After earning a BFA in Photography from Indiana University, minoring in art history and botany, I worked in ethnobotany research, as well as a perfumer, herbalist and educator. ​

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'PITCH PINE POLLEN:A TRANSFORMING FOREST IN PHOTOGRAPHY & SCENT' at olfactory art keller, 2024​​​​​​​

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Press Release: Olfactory Art Keller is honored to present Pitch Pine Pollen: A Transforming Forest, a solo exhibition of recent work by Brooklyn-based perfumer and multimedia artist Irina Adam. The exhibit is centered on aromatic plant extracts first created as mementos of one of the artist’s favorite hiking spots, a secluded coastal patch of the Long Island Pine Barrens.. The scents are accompanied by photographs that are part of an ongoing project capturing the visual poetry and abstract shapes of the forest. In 2022, the Pitch Pines dominating the forest started being decimated by the Southern Pine Beetle, which migrated up due to increasing temperatures. Irina found herself recording green needles turning to red, then grey. Tall grasses took over the newly sunny spots, thorny native vines threw their tendrils into ghostly trunks. A swarm of woodpeckers cleaned the tree tops. Spiderwebs tangled over branch tips, and small bogs formed where the trees stopped absorbing water.

After one day’s sobering visit to a pine forest with no smell, Irina was delighted in spring by the vibrant sweet scent of pine pollen that burst from the last surviving branches, and got inspired to preserve the forest's scentscape. The pollen continued to emit its tenacious buzzing aroma while suspended in alcohol. She also infused pine resin, which the trees released as defense against the beetles, needles, and green pollen tips, as well as neighboring fragrant tree flowers of beach plum and oak. She composed her latest perfume, Pitch Pine Pollen with these wild ingredients, an evocative tree-flower and pine pollen amber made in collaboration with a changing forest. 

Pitch Pine Pollen: A Transforming Forest  compels us to witness the reality of swift, irreversible loss due to global warming. But it also invites us to engage with the surprising beauty of change and resilience. The landscape goes on, but transformed. Created in the Napeague area, meaning ‘land overflowed by the sea’ in native Montaukett. A portion of all sales from this show will be donated to the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, an environmental education and advocacy organization focusing on protecting drinking water and preserving open space, especially in Long Island’s Pine Barrens.​​

This multi-sensory exhibit invites conversation with the story of a forest, bearing witness through image as well as partaking in its breath through scent. During the pandemic, like many others I found myself hiking much slower while recovering from Covid, then Lyme. I contemplated the reality of being a body in a forest, both taken over by tiny parasites proliferated by humans in some way. With this work, I’m sharing my connection with a land witnessed and befriended over time.

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This site is under construction~

 

CONTACT: irinaaa@gmail.com

CV link

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Link to scent art + natural perfume site, Phoenix Botanicals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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