Valerie Mann's "Fortunes"

Meet Valerie Mann, here wearing a Circle of Art t-shirt. She is one of the WSG Gallery artists most attentive to social issues. She was one of the organizers of the recent art auction, Circle of Art, which raised thousands of dollars for Food Gatherers. Here she tackles one of the most important issues of all: parenting.

When asked what started her thinking about the art in this show, she said "'Fortunes' is a meditative piece on parenting. It's about my role as a parent" and it was inspired by "dear friends who pay attention to how they parent their children, how they pass on coping skills."
Remarks made by the first Bush administration about how parents feel about their children in the middle east - "They don't value life like we do" - also stirred her thoughts and feelings feeding into this work.
However, she says, "I have always been really leery of using words in a piece of art so it was a big departure for me - the 'Fortunes' piece." Ultimately, Valerie says, "the piece is about transcending one's own situation." The response she would like to see in the viewer is "compassion for other people and oneself."
When I asked Valerie if the feminist art movement (its focus on sewing and embroidery and "women's work") had influenced her, she said "I would say 'yes' although in school there was a backlash." Still, she says she was afraid of power tools at first but in the end was teaching others.
Tools and techniques are what concerned her most during her education beginning at Purdue in Saturday classes when she was in high school and continuing at Illinois and in grad-school at Michigan State in the sculpture department. "Fortunes" can be considered an installation/sculpture piece.
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Asked what medium is her favorite of the many she uses in her work she replied, I love rubber (from inner tubes) but I also love paint and mixing color and wood as well as reclaiming materials. She says she has re-used materials since her undergrad years. The alphabet piece is an example of this as well as "Fortunes."
"When Isaac was learning his letters, I started the alphabets (in 1998/99; above is the seventh in the series) and began to think of letters as tools. They also push my design sensibility."
She says that when her daughter, Ellery, 10, saw the "Z" in this last alphabet, she said, "I want to buy one!"
The "Z" is hard to see within this high contrast overlay; come to the gallery and check it out!