Etel Adnan’s large-scale ceramic mural Untitled (2023) debuted alongside an extensive presentation of her work in the solo exhibition “Painting into Space” (2023–24) at The Bass Museum in Miami. The spectacular work, created posthumously from a 2020 drawing, features vibrant geometric fields of color. One of less than 10 Adnan ceramic murals worldwide, it is the sole example in the U.S. In a fascinating activation—now on view as part of the museum’s permanent collection—Bass curator-at-large James Voorhies commissioned two artists to create back-to-back projects “in dialogue” with the work.
The first, created by Ulla von Brandenburg, featured a multimedia theatrical project, with Adnan’s mural serving as backdrop and inspiration and works by Sonia Delaunay providing additional visual references. With “Faire Foyer,” Sarah Crowner has taken a more formal and serene, though no less energized approach, with a focus on a shared interest in social and spatial environments, light, and abstracted and geometric forms.
Maureen Sullivan: I have to give James Voorhies credit for amazing artist-matchmaking. While working in vastly different ways, you and Etel Adnan experiment with a similar range of materials, colors, and forms, and even have the California coast as a common inspiration. You mentioned that you knew of Adnan’s work but hadn’t considered it in terms of your own. What were your thoughts when Voorhies approached you to create a project in dialogue with Adnan’s mural? Did he have something already in mind?
Sarah Crowner: I was very aware of Adnan’s work and appreciated it from afar. I’ve always thought that her most beautiful works are her large-scale tapestries; but honestly, I was more interested in her life story and background than her work in the formal sense. Her relationship to California and its landscape is something I know very intimately. I never had the opportunity to study her ceramic murals, so when James approached me about making an exhibition in this space with the mural, I was curious and became motivated to try something new.
MS: Adnan once said: “Architecture contains everything: form, color, social concerns.” You’ve created an intimate space, with the color extending from the artwork to the carpeted floor and up the wall. In addition, the curved wall partially encloses the space in a hug, effectively shifting it from simply being a transitional hallway with a work on the wall to a dedicated gallery. It all seems aligned with your interest in incorporating architecture, spatial environments, and awareness of how we move through a space. What is the term faire foyer, and how did it influence your direction for the exhibition?
SC: “Foyer” is a common term for an entrance or transitional space. In French, foyer carries an architectural connotation, one that links two architectural zones and embraces a concept of warmth. In that sense, the term also relates to an inviting space, and I was interested in creating a feeling of being nestled in an intimate way. I guess “nest” is a good word.
I wanted to make a space that felt distinct from the rest of the museum and transformative for that particular gallery. I thought the best way to do that would be to create an installation that is almost like a sculpture in its own right, something that has a clear autonomy. I did this by connecting the color of the walls to the color of the carpet to the color of the pedestals, creating one autonomous unit. It works against the architecture because it situates a curved wall within a space that’s full of straight lines and straight angles. I like the sense that it’s separate but also related to that space. I left the wall open on one side so that one could fully view Adnan’s work and placed the sculptures to reflect the mural’s abstract imagery. So, there’s a dialogue between the architecture and the art, and also between my work and Adnan’s since you can see aspects of her mural very clearly in the curves of my bronze stones.
MS: The interplay beautifully captures your mutual interest in light, color, and abstracted form. I understand your sculptures were cast, with the forms based on stones that you picked up while walking on the beach. How did you choose these bronze sculptures for the exhibition, and what is your process for fabricating them?
SC: I had been working on this series of sculptures for a couple years before this exhibition, but these particular stones were just recently cast. I grew up in southern California, not far from the beach in Ventura. I had been collecting stones that would sometimes pop up on the beach with almost perfect circles carved out of them through erosion and time. To me, they looked like tiny studies for large-scale sculptures along the lines of Barbara Hepworth or Henry Moore. A few forms really spoke to me, and I could imagine them expanded and re-created in a different material, almost the opposite of their light gray, rough surface. I envisioned them larger, with smooth, shiny, mirrored surfaces, so I chose bronze. I work with a studio and foundry in Mexico where we use a 3D scanner to model the original forms.
MS: I’m thinking about the carpet and how you wanted to create a hush in the space. I don’t know if you saw Rudolf Stingel’s Plan B, a temporary public art installation at Grand Central back in 2004. It was my first project at Creative Time and a collaboration with the Art Production Fund. Stingel created a giant carpet, 27,000 square feet, that filled the Vanderbilt Hall, bringing it back to its original use as a waiting room. The vibrant color scheme, based on a casino flowered carpet, was quite the opposite of your soothing blue, but it had the same effect of immediately slowing people down as they walked on something that softened their stride, that their conscious minds likely didn’t register. They started hanging out in the space more, and it seems like that was part of your intent in offering something visual that also provides comfort.
SC: I did see that intervention. An effect like that of Rudi’s carpet on Grand Central is something that I often think about in my work. How does the body feel in an exhibition space? Whether you are walking on carpet, concrete, or tile platforms can change your reception of the surroundings. And if you’re looking at a painting while standing on a hard, glossy, colorful patterned floor (versus a very soft, sound-absorbing, plush, saturated carpet, versus a very cold, clinical concrete floor), it affects how you feel and the way that you read and receive a painting on the wall.
MS: Adnan is known for a wide range of media, including drawing, painting, tapestry, and writing. You’ve unearthed even more surprises with her rarely exhibited photography. There are lots of references to the sea in this exhibition, which makes sense—The Bass is located two blocks from the ocean, Adnan spent four decades in Sausalito, and you were brought up on the California coast. How did you learn about these photographs and decide to include them in the exhibition?
SC: We know that the California coastline is irresistible and that Adnan spent time in northern California in the 1960s, when the photographs are dated. I would guess that her photographs were an inspiration for her abstract paintings, which are very landscape based, and you often see the horizon in them. They’re beautiful, small color photographs, and the quality of the film she used has that great mid-century feel, with strong and saturated blues.
I was really thrilled when James showed me the photographs, and they became the key to the concept of the exhibition. Adnan’s images of the rocky shoreline in California and my stones come from the same place. I was not initially considering showing my stone sculptures, but the photographs revealed an unexpected connection or link between our work—though located in different times. It has been nearly 60 years since these photographs were made, which makes me question the age of the stones. How long did it take for the sea to tumble them into their final form?
MS: In her book Sea and Fog (2012), Adnan wrote: “The spherical ocean’s luminescence is a thing familiar, but our energies won’t respond to its call; they’re designed for the body’s penetration by salt, and the soft happiness that invades the spirit when water meets light.” I think this beautifully captures the power the ocean has on both of you. In addition to this dialogue with Adnan, you’re known for site-responsive installations that dialogue with the legacies of artists and architects such as Ellsworth Kelly, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Lina Bo Bardi. Do you see the exhibition at The Bass as an extension of that experimentation or as something different?
SC: The dialogue with Adnan is definitely a continuation of that thread in my practice. I just realized that in the exhibitions I’ve done recently, in the last two years precisely, I’ve been paired with artists born in the 1920s—Twombly, Kelly, Chamberlain, Bo Bardi, and Adnan. There must be something about that period that is speaking to me; perhaps it’s the distance of these artists from the present. I’ve always thought of art history as material that is malleable and open to reinterpretation, including my own work. That meaning can shift, depending on context or proximity, fascinates me.
“Faire Foyer: Sarah Crowner in Dialogue with Etel Adnan” is on view at The Bass through July 26, 2026.
