October 2013

The Real Cinderella Dress and Other Recent Work: Valerie Mann

Valerie Mann’s newest show just opened at WSG gallery Oct. 20, 2013.  The show is a series of small installations.  The first piece to greet visitors to the gallery is ‘The Real Cinderella Dress’, an evening gown pieced from vintage cotton seed/feed bags with black rubber birds lifting the hem of the gown skyward by long cotton strings.

The birds in ‘The Real Cinderella Dress’ cast wonderful shadows on the adjacent walls and on the floor!

The second installation at the gallery is ‘Grosbeak Swoop’, a wall of black grosbeak silhouettes flying in a flock in one great swoop from the floor up and off the edge of the wall.

“I have cut many of these rubber birds by hand,” says Mann, “but found that I can use a laser cutter at this great place called Makerworks, in Ann Arbor, to cut the birds much faster, and without the wear and tear on my wrists.  All I had to do was scan my drawings, convert them to vector files in either Corel Draw or Illustrator, and I could change the sizes of the birds with the click of a mouse.  It was really interesting to learn and use the technology.”

The final installation is a wall of 140 birds woven, sewn and embellished with re-purposed wire, vintage sewing notions, buttons and a variety of materials.  The piece is called ‘Variations within a Species’ and was conceived of after several visits to the bird collection of the University of Michigan Natural History Museum.

Mann says,” I was invited to come draw the birds in the back room by a graduate student who said ‘technically, we’re a public collection, and only a handful of people come to visit and study the collection during the course of a year’.  I told her ‘I had no idea I could do that!  I’ll be there!’ ”  Four weeks and many drawing/paintings later, Mann came up with the idea for ‘Variations within a Species’ and was furiously making birds throughout the summer and fall.  Visit her blog to read more about her experiences at the museum and see photos of the birds: http://valerie-mann.squarespace.com/

The gallery is located at 306 S. Main St. in Ann Arbor.  Please join us for the reception November 1, 2013, 7-10 pm.