Adrienne Outlaw transforms post-consumer plastic into sculptural and participatory work. In doing so, she grounds ecological stewardship in material practice. Attentive to the scale, persistence, and strange beauty of accumulated waste, she treats plastic as a tangible, shared problem shaped by everyday use and open to collective action.

Repetition, accumulation, and collective contribution shape her immersive installations, participatory environments, and photographic prints. The environments slow people down and hold them in the material, making visible how individual actions add up within larger systems of consumption and care.

Joy is a deliberate strategy in Outlaw’s practice. Through color, light, and pattern, she invites curiosity and sustained attention as an alternative to environmental despair. Participation is central to how these pieces take form, as material, labor, and attention shape their structure. Drawing on her background in fiber art and material studies, Outlaw often likens her process to a quilting bee grounded in collective action and aesthetic rigor.

Outlaw exhibits internationally in museums, universities, and public spaces. Whether encountered at architectural scale or through intimate photographic prints, her work returns to joy as resilience and to collective making shared responsibility.

Selected Highlights

• Creator of Make Waves, a multi-city public art initiative addressing plastic waste through collective making

• Commissioned for permanent and temporary public artworks in civic, cultural, and outdoor contexts

• Creates accessible, immersive installations engaging people of all ages and abilities

• Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and regional civic partners