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KIMBERLY MACARTHUR GRAHAM

>>> Erin Adams, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Erin Adams.

Plainspoken but eloquent, Erin Adams hopes never to be pigeonholed as a tile artist. "After 20 years," she explains, "I have realized I'm more of a design innovator, pushing materials. I like taking a material and seeing if I can take it where it hasn't been taken before." Adams' impressive career, filled with awards and important commissions, points to this insatiable appetite for innovation, as well as to an almost uncanny sense for creating work that people really, really want.

As usual, Adams has just returned home to Albuquerque from somewhere else. She moved to New Mexico six years ago to be near her mother, but she travels often to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. "I love coming back to the airport here," she admits. "Even though I'm very busy here, I'm not in the limelight." She's not aiming to impress; she's just being completely honest. Her elaborate glass-tile creations—wall murals, encrusted light fixtures and accessories—are in huge demand, and so is she. She is down-to-earth, relaxed and funny.

Born in San Antonio, Texas, Adams grew up around art. Her mother owned a seminal contemporary art gallery with folk art offerings in back, and both her parents were great friends with renowned minimalist painter Agnes Martin. Like most kids, though, Adams rebelled against the art career her parents hoped she'd pursue, instead earning a psychology degree from the University of Texas, though she did head to Pratt Institute to study art therapy. "Pratt was my ticket out of Texas," she says with a laugh, adding that she changed her major to ceramics the very first day, after seeing all the therapy program's "beanbags and hippies."

Landing in ceramics was no accident. She'd excelled in classes taken at both U.T. and at Idaho's Sun Valley Center for the Arts, selling virtually every piece she made.

Erin Adams' custom installations include fireplaces and walls.

In New York, immersed herself in art- and design-centric pursuits, starting up a well-reviewed gallery that featured painstakingly handcrafted installations and designing interiors for an über in-crowd that included hotelier André Balazs (and actor Uma Thurman) and socialite designer Alison Spear. Then she completed her first mosaic work, a marble staircase in Houston, and realized that she really wanted to be in the studio, to create product. And, too, she fell in love with glass.

"I actually hate being called a glass-tile artist," she avers. "It just happened to be the medium I fell for. It's malleable, reconfigurable. I'm interested in the qualities of a medium. People have said I should put my mosaic patterns on carpet, but I'm not interested in just pattern."

Instead, she weaves vitreous textiles resplendent with pattern, texture and color, and then allows them to pour over architectural spaces or hug the curves of light fixtures and cabinet knobs. Her design influences are wide ranging, but several, including Minimalist art and architecture, and folk art, recall her mother's loves. And somehow, Adams fuses it all into a piece of art that totally works. Some of her newest motifs—populated with curtains of vines or buoyant circles that recall the fizz in a glass of champagne—take advantage of new technology that allows tile to be cut with curving edges and rounded shapes. Adams is in her element using an exciting new water-jet cutter to make tile surprising yet again.

Luna, an Erin Adams-designed glass and aluminum tile.

A perfectionist, Adams precisely measures and plots her mosaics to be installed seamlessly ("like wallpaper," she explains), though she describes her creative process as "kind of like jazz. It's about a flow. We refuse to template, but we count it out so it's on a grid form. But it's not a rigid template, because we want the handcraftsmanship to come through. It's not perfect." Unsurprisingly, Adams herself oversees every installation.

Customization for size, proportion and color is part of nearly all projects, both commercial and residential. "It's all about customization," she says. "Colors are personal, and clients should have a hand in the design process. I'm not dictating to them." Certain projects, however, demand a level of intense collaboration that Adams relishes. As this magazine went to press, for example, she was working with a client to translate an abstract painting into a wall mosaic. She wasn't actually sure what the final result would look like, but she felt the process was pushing her to discover something else about her chosen medium. She says, "I want to take the preciousness out of painting and bring it into the home. I want to do 2,000 square feet!"

Erin Adams' creations are available through Ann Sacks Tile & Stone, www.annsacks.com; also available exclusively in Arizona through Craftsman Court Ceramics, Scottsdale, AZ, (480) 970-6611, and Tucson, AZ, (520) 319-1777; or the company can be contacted via www.erinadamsdesign.com.