Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy – new work by Valerie Mann

WSG: Tell us about why the show is titled Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy’

VM: The title of this show is a quote from a Ren & Stimpy cartoon episode – really, the only part of an episode I ever watched. The goofy fun of it, combined with the slightly disturbing visual during the singing of the ‘Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy’ song just popped into my head as I was making the work for this show.  It made me laugh and accentuated the joy of the making process for me that particular day.  

Our lives are composed of good, bad, good and bad and sometimes it happens so fast that it’s hard to recover from moment to moment.  We laugh at ‘inappropriate’ times because we find the humor in our situations or we cry at ‘inappropriate’ times, because we can’t quite get it out at the moment it seems appropriate because we have to keep our wits together.  – Valerie Mann

Circle Practice and Chevrons,
41 x 43 x 5″. wire, rubber, leather, found objects

Circle Practice and Chevrons, detail

 The artist’s statement follows:

All art is made within some kind of context.  That’s one of the things we love about art – the stories behind the pieces or the makers.  The past 4 months have been a traumatic time for our family. A time which our family will refer to as ‘before and after’ for quite some time.  One of the many saving graces has been keeping a healthy sense of humor. When I got back to the studio ‘after’, I faced an unfinished piece that, luckily, had some interesting things going on in it that I might have missed, had I not been in the ‘after’.  The entire experience – ‘the during’- was a forced paring down to essentials, a forced economy of function. It was a great starting point for something new.

With this body of work, I continue my pursuit of interesting shadows.  I get back to some basics like line, shape, color, value (shadow density), movement, texture.  The pieces are joyful and playful. Because making art is joyful and playful!  In the making of this work, I allowed myself to make mistakes and experiment, which is harder than you might think.  

Domestic Bliss Sketches 2,
10 x 9 x 3″
steel, found objects

The New Normal, wire, rubber, leather, found objects, 43 x 45 x 5″

The New Normal, detail

Pay particular attention to the shadows in the sculptural pieces. For instance, in ‘The New Normal’, I consider the lines I created by crocheting wire, leather, etc. to be three-dimensional drawn lines. They cast different densities of silhouettes against the wall.  The shadows become a drawing of their own.

Variations on Domestic Bliss Sketches 5, 16 x 13″, watercolor, collage

I come from a background of both painting and sculpture. I am constantly thinking of how those two worlds connect, cross over and diverge. This new body of work comes closest to melding 2-D and 3-D ideas for me, while still allowing those ideas to maintain individual integrity.

Variations on Domestic Bliss Sketches 2, 12 x 16″, watercolor, collage

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy is on exhibit through March 16, 2019.