The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond, to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. A listing in the OAR does not confer an endorsement, approval, or verification by the Ohio Arts Council.
For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.
Valerie Marek
artistMassillon Ohio 44647 United StatesHome Ohio United States Home Phone: 3308444067
Bio
Valerie Marek received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and her MFA from Kent State University in 2017. She has also taught Foundations Drawing at Kent State University’s Center for Visual Art.
She lives in the Massillon area where inspiration comes from the Tuscarawas River and its history, especially dichotomy of its present tense, the past and future. The history of the area is rife with coal mines, canal boats and hidden clues of the inhabitants, including the Delaware Indians who were on the West side of the River after the Greenville Treaty, in and around her property.
Her Abstract landscapes invite the viewer to seek their own interpretation of this beautiful land and river, seeking revelation, rather than realization.
Artist Statement
The Aura of Place
Every day is a new way to understand our shadows. I seek to transform the real world not by scraps of precarious forms, but by faith inducing indices. My abstract landscapes seek to reconcile the ineffable, which invites the viewer to realize their own impression of place and how they fit in, despite any fragility, which does not arrange silence, only embraces it, seeking realization rather than revelation.
I am fascinated by things that are invisible; I express this in my art by negotiating between what I see and what I do not. I seek a visceral and emotionally charged response to locate aura in my subject matter and its history, whether real or implied.