Please contact Valerie Wallace at vwallaceart@gmail.com with any questions or inquiries.
Valerie Wallace has been making art (mostly printmaking) for the last 25 years. She received her BFA from Washington University (St. Louis) in 2000, her MFA from Northern Illinois University in 2004, and taught printmaking and design at Portland State University from 2005-2011. Wallace has exhibited widely across the United States and her prints are included in numerous private and public collections. Valerie lives outside of Portland, Oregon with her husband, kids, a gray pitbull, and a well-worn etching press.
Valerie printing on the large press at NIU. Picture on the left, 2003. Picture on the right, 2018.
Q & A questions asked by Jamie Berger for PUSH PRINT: 30+ ARTISTS EXPLORE THE BOUNDARIES OF PRINTMAKING from 2012.
(This book was published in 2012, but the questions were so good that I just updated my answers and included it below).
What inspires you these days?
I think that having children has provoked in me an obsession with researching and recording my family’s history. Over the years you pick up the snippets of oft repeated lore all families have; taking a closer look I was able to find the real stories behind the myths. This research had helped me form a more complete understanding of American history and what I have learned informs almost everything in my art.
Early influences.
My first exposure to “art” was a visit to the Missouri State Capitol when I was 5 or 6. The Capitol is full of very large awe-inspiring murals by Thomas Hart Benton. Benton created these epic paintings in 1935 and 1936, and they are a great example of New Deal art. The murals are filled with political and historical commentary and mostly depict the heroism of everyday life. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the impact of Benton’s work on my own. And forty years later, his art is still my favorite.
How did you get into printmaking?
I didn’t do much art before going to college, and it didn’t even occur to me that I might be good at it someday. I have Aphantasia (an inability to form mental images), so I’ve never been able to draw from memory. Which I thought was a requirement to be an artist. So at eighteen, I went off to college at the University of Chicago intending to study medicine. On a whim, I took a 3-D art class my first term there. For my final project I collected bags of trash from dumpsters from around the city and organized the trash by color/value into a 60 foot long sculpture. The feeling after I was done, was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. My fate and future were sealed, even though I didn’t know exactly what that was going to look like.
Since I associated the University of Chicago with a career in medicine, I moved back home to Columbia, MO and decided to go to the University of Missouri to figure things out. All the painting classes were full, so I ended up signing up for Intro to Printmaking taught by Tom Huck. It is not an overstatement to say that Tom Huck changed the direction of my life and made me a printmaker. I took every printmaking class that I could from Tom, and under his suggestion, I transferred to Washington University in St. Louis, and started the BFA program in printmaking there at 20 years old. (You can see the first print I made in Tom’s class in my ARCHIVE.)
What responses do you get to your work?
It varies quite a bit. In my early twenties, my work dealt a lot with sexual politics and shock and had a polarizing effect. People were embarrassed, even offended (which is fine by me) or they took up the challenge and found something to identify with. Currently, the work is often (but not always) more subtle. There are still moments of satire and hopefully offense in my prints, but the overall tone is more layered. For instance, I created a linocut depicting Ronald and Nancy Reagan riding leisurely on horseback through a barren desert. In this piece it’s not immediately evident what my point of view is. The viewer has to spend more time with the piece, bringing their own opinions and biases about Ron and Nancy to bear.
How has your technique developed?
My mark making over the years has gotten more simple and deliberate. The portrait series has really helped me refine how I use line within my prints. I think I edit more now. Glitter, money, resin, stickers, gold leaf, beads, actual baby bottle nipples all found their way into my work. As I’ve been at this longer, I’ve become more confident in my images. The more I work, the better I become at creating and communicating my narratives through simple mark making and composition.
What does printmaking mean to you?
History and community.
When you carve a mark in wood or linoleum or draw a line in a piece of zinc, that image becomes a part of the long and rich history of printmaking. The marks of a relief print have an inherent sadness to them; because of the depiction of social commentary, war, poverty, and political satire that has dominated the history of the process. I can’t make a print without seeing the direct influence and tenor of works by Albrecht Durer, Kathe Kollwitz, or Otto Dix. You could create a relief print of a teddy bear holding a dozen roses and probably still seem dark. It’s this baggage that I love about printmaking and something that is wholly unique to the process.
Printmaking also means community to me. It was the community of printmaking that I think, probably more than anything, fit my sensibility. It also led me to my graduate school mentor Michael Barnes. Michael really helped me become a more precise printmaker and taught me how to appreciate and use the characteristics of the medium. I think that without the relationships and affiliation of the print community, it would be difficult to develop in a way I would be satisfied with. It all stems from the need to work in a shop environment with shared equipment; printmakers are constantly around one another sharing information. It would be hard for me to have evolved into the artist I am today without the community that surrounds printmaking.
Walk me through a day in your studio.
Each day, month, year is different. I spent a decade trying to follow what I was taught in school; work in your studio every day, draw in a sketchbook, and always think about and work towards your next gallery show. I’m autistic, and I was constantly burned out in my 20’s and 30’s from the pressure to produce and advance in my career. Once I had kids, I was forced to be honest with myself. Now, I make art when I want to and at my own pace. My autistic brain never shuts down and I am constantly thinking about it all, all the time. And some of those thoughts I turn into art. I know that I will be making art in some form for the rest of my life. That alone, at middle-age, is how I define my success as an artist.
How has your subject matter evolved?
My art has grown up with me. In the beginning, there was a lot of angst in my work, and a need to be more blatant. While everything I make is still personal, it’s all couched in a larger framework. I am no longer interested in simply embarrassing or shocking viewers. I am interested in seducing with the hope of a longer term dialogue.