Mary Valverde

Mary Valverde (born 1975) is a Queens-born Latina artist who lives, works, and teaches in New York. She is a cultural practitioner who is invested in ritual, the quotidian, and syncretic relationships rooted in a basis of research and socially implicit trans-physics. Valverde has served on th
Public Design Commission of the City of New York
since 2015.

Early life and education

Mary Valverde was born in Queens, NY and has continued to live and work in New York for most of her life. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in 1999, followed by a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012. Valverde completed her Associates of Arts and Sciences from the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Art

Mary Valverde is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in learning and sharing. Her work is primarily based in sculpture, drawing, and installation. She works often with quotidian materials such as paper, yarn, tape, and chalk interspersed with culturally charged materials such as cocoa butter, coffee, corn husks, and her body. Themes present in her work include memory, ritual, culture, and adornment. She is interested in chronicling, researching, and the systematic arrangement of objects. Her work gives form to patterns both natural and constructed, while creating tension and movement within space. These themes stem from an attraction to site-specificity and investigation of material and spatial properties. Much of her work deals with gestures of navigation and structures of memory.

Her installation work alludes to the recreation of mystical spaces related to sacrifices and elements that relate to the matter. Her pieces create a connection between form, mark making, and proportions that intend to describe the piece. Mary’s arrangements bring elements that create an appealing connection based on mathematical representations. Her compositional pieces register, itemize and catalog patterns as well as study of ways that works of art are empowered to fill space, the individual as a whole and its psychology.

The concept of time and space is very present in her work, which is translated through the creation of marks and prints in her drawings, photographs, installations and performances. Valverde writes: “There is a consistent balance of action and restraint, freedom and limitation, and attraction and resistance that plays out in all of my work. I try to maintain a sense of immediacy and directness by a fusion of process, material and the body. I employ the innate qualities of malleable and ephemeral materials (sometimes ink, string, fabric, cotton, wire, oil, water, coffee, cocoa butter etc.) to examine the politics of production, exploitation, social roles, culture and tradition. Working in series has forced a continuous focus and understanding of myself in relation to the act of making."

Teaching

Mary Valverde teaches at Hunter College, York College, and Cooper Union School of Art. She has lectured at various institutions, including the Stanford University and Long Island University's MFA departments.

Exhibitions and awards

Valverde is the recipient of both University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Design's Full Dean's Diversity Fellowship, and the 2010 Artist Fellowship, Inc. Individual Artist Award. She received the Mayer Foundation Grant the same year, and was the MFA Lecturer at the ICA Philadelphia in 2011. She was chosen as Thomas Hunter Ceramic Artist in Residence in 2014, Artist Alliance Rotating Studio Program in Lower Manhattan for 2008, artist in residence at Artist Alliance Residency 2007, and Aljira Center for Contemporary Art's Emerge Program in 2006. Valverde has exhibited her work at a diverse range of venues, includin
MoCA North MiamiThe New Jersey State MuseumBRACArt Center South Florida
El Museo del Barrio
The Queens Museum of Art
Jersey City Museum
Momenta GallerySaltworks GalleryCorridor GalleryRush Arts GalleryDiaspora Vibe GalleryAbrons Art CenterCuchifritos GalleryAferro Gallery
an
Tribes Gallery
Valverde has also contributed to various projects through her involvement with the BASE collective. She has served as Commissioner (Sculptor seat), of th
Public Design Commission of the City of New York
since 2015.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Valverde, Mary
1975 births
Living people
Cooper Union faculty
Fashion Institute of Technology alumni
Hispanic and Latino American women in the arts
Hunter College faculty
Interdisciplinary artists
Artists from New York City
School of Visual Arts alumni
University of Pennsylvania alumni
York College, City University of New York faculty