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2024 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Valerie Marek
artistCanton Ohio 44735 United States
Bio
Valerie Marek received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and her MFA from Kent State University in 2017, where she is part-time faculty in Foundations Drawing.
She has exhibited at the Artist’s Living Room in NYC, Oak Park Art League in Chicago, The Wasmer Gallery at Ursuline College in Cleveland, Yellowstone Art Museum in Montana, Malone University in Canton, Ohio, The Summit Art Space in Akron, as well as the Prama Gallery in Cleveland.
Her abstract environments, primarily on paper, depict the aura of place and history, an overlapping of tense invested in revelation, rather than realization.
Artist Statement
The Aura of Place
I am interested in the invisible and its deception. My abstract environments have an overlapping of tense which I perceive, a space to enter into, invested in revelation, rather than realization. I believe chronology is a myth and that time is an illusion. Everything is happening at once. For me, the simultaneity of tense is reality.
I am not interested in telling stories because it is frontal. How the viewer perceives my images is a freedom I accommodate based on their own experiences. My multi-media work, primarily on paper, has a background and foreground. The candle soot I use, a type of charcoal, has movement inherent in its whisps and instability. I remove parts of the charcoal in order to communicate what is left, the foreground. That written language and handwriting is slowly becoming extinct, I feel that my work is a letter. Who reads it may also be perceived as invisible. The juncture of antennae to antennae intrigues me because it is ephemeral and at the same time, forever.