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MONICA VALENTINE
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Monica Valentine in "Creative Growth Art Center: San Francisco Bay Area,”2018
From the Art in the Twenty-First Century series
Courtesy Art21, art21.org, founded 1997Monica Valentine has attended Creative Growth since 2012. Monica is blind and wears prosthetic eyes, having lost her sight in early childhood. Color dominates and informs much of Monica’s life, and her ability to feel the color of an object by its temperature (a form of synesthesia) is just one way that she uses color to orient and empower herself in her environment. Monica dresses head to toe in monochrome every day, adorns herself with coordinated bike reflectors, and usually asks what someone’s favorite color is before learning their name.
“When Monica refers to color, there’s something internal that she’s speaking about that isn’t just about the temperature. Temperature is a way of explaining the way she feels. If she’s wearing blue, she’ll sit around and ask what things are blue. What around me is the same as me, what is close to me, what am I connected to. That’s amazing to think about - how am I mirrored in my surroundings?”
-Amy Keefer, Studio Instructor -
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Sculptures
Monica’s primary practice takes the form of optically charged sculptures composed of foam shapes that are densely covered with beads and sequins. Working with great dexterity, Monica threads sequins and seed beads onto thin pins, then uses her hands to feel along the foam in order to find their placement. The process is rhythmic and calculated. Monica’s exacting standards of bead size and color, foam shape and material, result in forms that are whole and perfect in their being. Visually rich and luminous, her sculptures are either monochromatic (red is her favorite color), or blooming with multiple hues as Monica creates layers by juxtaposing the colors of sequins and beads.
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“When we first closed, I pulled together all of Monica's materials and her caregiver Yvonne picked everything up. I wasn't sure how long we would have to be closed for, so I included all the beads and sequins I could find that met her size requirements even if they weren't in her preferred palettes. With a scarcity of materials she has had to make new choices, such as using fuchsia instead of her preferred red. Working at home has also allowed her to be more contemplative about color and material, and she has embraced much of the adversity, which shows in her recent work."
-Matt Dostal, Studio Director
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Textiles
Monica’s determination and relationship with the tangible world is evidenced by her fast adaptation to weaving. Introduced by touch to a Saori loom by Studio Instructor Anne Meade Paden, Monica weaves monochromatic yarns until the piece outgrows the loom. Working exclusively in red, orange, green, or blue, her long textiles have a distinctive looped fringe on the left side that forms as she pulls the shuttle out to feel the yarn’s tension before starting the next row. Monica’s long singular weavings have been installed individually, or made into clothing: ponchos, dresses, and wraps, and are often adorned with bike reflectors. Monica has modeled some of them at Creative Growth’s annual Beyond Trend fashion show—they are red, of course, if she’s made them for herself.
“Teaching Monica to weave was all by touch, so I let her feel everything and explained what it would do, there were not a lot of words involved really but a lot of motions with hands. I would use my hands on her feet to show her how to push on the pedals. She picked it up really fast as soon as she understood what the rhythm was.”
-Anne Meade Paden, Textile Instructor
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Monica Valentine
Untitled (MV 112),2019
Woven textile
Fits size 2-6, fabric stretches
$850Monica Valentine, Untitled, 2019$ 850.00
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Monica Valentine and Studio Instructor Amy Keefer at Beyond Trend 2018. Image by Feather Weight.
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Monica, who reads and writes in Braille, described her relationship with color and fashion in the form of a poem for The Creative Growth Magazine: Issue 2.
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I like to dress in red. Dress in green, dress in blue, dress in yellow, dress in purple, dress in white and black. Red is HOT. Yellow and orange feel warm. Green feels kinda freezing, blue feels cold. I can tell by the feel of them with my hands. I lost my sight, I had my eyes removed. First the left one and then the right one. I can feel the colors when I lay out my clothes.
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Catherine Valentine in "Monica's Journey to Creative Growth" 2016. Film by Elena Mateus, Monica’s niece.
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