Valerie Zimany’s work incorporates many elements that I love – they’re largely made of porcelain, she creates multiples from the same mold and manipulates those repetitions, and she uses her molds til they break down – turning memories into faded ones.
You can see where her molds are fused on the pieces, which I also like the look of. So often we spend so much tie avoiding showing the work that goes into making something but this takes a lot of work!
The placement of her installations I find really unexpected but fun. I love, for example, this door-side piece.
These shapes remind me of Louise Bourgeois’ pieces, albeit in light color washes and at a smaller scale.
I think this piece is matte, a surface treatment I’m hooked on right now. I even went so far as to buy a matte-ifier for my nail polish.
I show a lot of vessels on the blog and it’s interesting to read about Valerie’s approach to the vessel tradition and her sometimes filling them and distorting them. Valerie is an art professor at Clemson in South Carolina but she studied for many years in Japan as a Fulbright Fellow and Government Scholar.
Another part of Valerie’s approach that I appreciate is that she uses all of her materials – if something has excess, it goes into the next piece. As her pieces often invoke for me the natural, underwater world, I can’t help but see that recycling impact her forms too! The above is clearly a favorite as it looks like monochromatic barnacles.
Tags: 3D, ceramics, installation, molds, porcelain, sculpture, vessels