![Abandoned Bronx Golf Center II, oil on linen, 15](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Abandoned_Bronx_Golf_Center_II%2C_oil_on_linen%2C_15%22_x_58%22%2C_on_site_by_Valeri_Larko_2016.jpg)
Valeri Larko (born 1960) is an American painter of urban and industrial landscapes. She is known for her
cityscapes, painted
en plein air.
Early life, education and early career
Born in Freeport on
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...
, New York, Larko grew up in
Parsippany,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
. She trained at the DuCret School of the Arts in
Plainfield, New Jersey, and at New York's
Art Students League and the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
(now the
National Academy Museum and School). In 1986 she moved to
Jersey City
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.[Summit, New Jersey
Summit is a city in Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The city is located on a ridge in northern- central New Jersey, within the Raritan Valley and Rahway Valley regions in the New York metropolitan area. At the 2010 United Sta ...]
, in 1989, the industrial fringes of northern New Jersey's cities remained central to Larko's work for several years until 2004, when she moved to the suburb of
New Rochelle, New York.
[Tammy La Gorce, Your Industrial Decay Is Her Inspiration, The New York Times, May 14, 2010](_blank)
/ref> With proximity to New York City, Larko's work incorporated the urban core of the city's boroughs, including the topography
Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps.
Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...
, infrastructure, and abundance of graffiti
Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...
-covered walls.[Aranda-Alvarado, Rocio]
"Disuse: The Landscapes of Valeri Larko, Catalogue essay for retrospective exhibition of work by the painter Valeri Larko at the Morris Museum in New Jersey"
ISSU.com, 2010
Career
Art
Since the 1980s, Larko has created her paintings on site, setting up her easel in salvage yards, industrialized marshlands, under highways, on rooftops, and on city streets. By the early 1990s, she was painting northern New Jersey's rusted bridges, derelict gas tanks, abandoned factories, and decaying docks, in works such as 1991's "BP Port, Newark".[Bischoff, Daniel]
''The Star Ledger'', May 2, 2010
During the period of the late 1980s, after her move to Jersey City,[Levin, Eric]
"Agony and Ecstasy Of The Outmoded: Valeri Larko's Art"
''New Jersey Monthly'', January 14, 2013 Larko's paintings of industrial New Jersey began as generalized landscapes. These works eventually became more specific, close-up views within the area's industrial parks. From 1990 to 1995, she completed the Tank Series, a cycle of sixty paintings which examined the sculptural qualities of the monumental chemical tanks found in northern New Jersey.
From 1999 to 2003, Larko executed the Salvage Yard Series, working eight hours a day on location at the Kucharski Yard, an active salvage yard in Hackettstown, New Jersey, treating the salvage debris as sculpture, mass, color and texture, the deterioration lending the debris a patina.[Nash, Margo]
"Think Modern Art is Junk?"
''The New York Times'', November 10, 2002 Working in oil on linen, the series comprises sixty paintings of various sizes, including monumental works of five and six feet, and smaller works on paper. In 2005, the Salvage Series was exhibited by the Arts Guild of Rahway, New Jersey
Rahway () is a city in southern Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. A bedroom community of New York City, it is centrally located in the Rahway Valley region, in the New York metropolitan area. The city is southwest of Manhattan ...
,[''Larko, website, A Bronx Block Paintings and Studies''] and in 2006 the Safe-T Gallery in Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
mounted a solo show of the series.["Weiss, Jennifer, Valeri Larko Preserves the Impermanent", ''The Wall Street Journal'', July 24, 2014]
After moving to New Rochelle in 2004, proximity to New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
afforded Larko an expanded view of the urban fringe. Though concentrating on the nearby borough of the Bronx, Larko also travelled to the city's more distant boroughs of Queens
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
and Brooklyn, documenting an urban fringe which was still in use, i.e., Brooklyn's industrialized Gowanus
Gowanus ( ) is a neighborhood in the northwestern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, within the area once known as South Brooklyn. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community District 6. Gowanus is bounded by Wyckoff Street on ...
canal, Newtown Creek
Newtown Creek, a long tributary of the East River, is an estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, in New York City. Channelization made it one of the most heavily-used bodies of water in the Port of N ...
["Reviews: Valeri Larko"](_blank)
Newington-Cropsey Cultural Center, Winter 2011 at the border of Brooklyn and Queens.
In 2012, Larko began "A Bronx Block", a 20-painting cycle documenting Boone Avenue and its graffiti-laced neighborhood. The Ferris-Stahl-Meyer meat processing plant, with the consent of the company president, Guillermo O. Gonzalez, had become a magnet for graffiti artists from the Bronx and elsewhere around New York City. The Ferris-Stahl-Meyer plant was demolished in November and December 2014 to make way for the Compass Residences development, a project consisting of 1,300 apartments and 46,000 square feet of retail space. Painting on location, Larko documented Boone Avenue's graffiti covered walls. Her project attracted local residents, affording her "personal interaction with the people I meet there. While talking to people in the area, I learn a lot about the sites that I am painting." Prominent New York graffiti artists who have contributed to the art on the Ferris-Stahl-Meyer building's walls, have recognized their images in Larko's paintings.[Bellantoni, Ralph, J.]
"Artist Valeri Larko Grew Up in Laker Parsippany, captures visual poetry of places"
'' Daily Record'', July 1, 2013
Larko's graffiti-laced paintings, apart from the Bronx Block series, were part of the Bronx Museum of the Arts
The Bronx Museum of the Arts (BxMA), also called the Bronx Museum of Art or simply the Bronx Museum, is an American cultural institution located in Concourse, Bronx, New York. The museum focuses on contemporary and 20th-century works created by A ...
year-long exhibition of summer 2012 to summer 2013, "Bronx Lab: Style Wars".["Bronx Lab:Style Wars, July 19, 2012 – June 2, 2013"](_blank)
/ref>
With the conclusion of the "Bronx Block" series, Larko resumed her focus on New York's broader urban fringe, finding subjects in its boroughs and in its greater metropolitan area, including new imagery from her original point of reference, industrial New Jersey. She also depicted signs of urban sprawl such as fast food restaurants, gas stations, webs of utility wires, and the spread of expressways.["Sprawl, Repossessed and First Look"]
''Art Daily'' March 2008
Exhibitions, public commissions and collections
Larko has exhibited continually since 1991 in the New York-New Jersey area as well as elsewhere in the United States and abroad. Exhibitions include, “Bronx Focus: Paintings by Valeri Larko” at the Bronx Museum
The Bronx Museum of the Arts (BxMA), also called the Bronx Museum of Art or simply the Bronx Museum, is an American cultural institution located in Concourse, Bronx, New York. The museum focuses on contemporary and 20th-century works created by A ...
which featured forty urban landscapes spanning ten years, 2005–2015, all of which the artist painted on location in the Bronx and “Location, Location, Location”, a solo exhibition at the Hampden Gallery, UMass Amherst, both in 2016. In 2015 the artist had a solo exhibitions at the Carol Schlosberg Gallery, Montserrat College of Art.
A twenty-two year mid career survey exhibition, "Valeri Larko: Two Decades", was on view at the Morris Museum in 2010,["Valeri Larko: Two Decades"]
Morris Museum, Virtual & Past Exhibitions, 2010 and solo shows at the Bronx River Arts Center, the Bronx Borough President's Art Gallery, the Hunterdon Art Museum
The Hunterdon Art Museum, previously known as the Hunterdon Art Center and the Hunterdon Museum of Art, is located in a historic stone mill at 7 Lower Center Street in Clinton, New Jersey. It was founded in 1952 when it purchased Dunham's Mill, t ...
, College of New Rochelle, the New Jersey State Museum, Union County College
Union College (formerly Union County College) is a public community college in Union County, New Jersey. It was founded in 1933 as the first of New Jersey's public community colleges. The college has four campuses: Cranford, Elizabeth, Plainfie ...
, the Johnson & Johnson Gallery at the company's corporate headquarters in New Brunswick
New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...
. She has been featured in several group exhibitions, including shows at the Butler Museum of American Art, the Fleming Museum, Jersey City Museum, Katonah Museum of Art
The Katonah Museum of Art is a non-collecting institution geared towards visual arts, located in Katonah, New York, Katonah, New York (state), New York. It does not have a permanent collection, but holds temporary exhibitions.
The museum was foun ...
, Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
, William Paterson University
William Paterson University, officially William Paterson University of New Jersey (WPUNJ), is a public university in Wayne, New Jersey. It is part of New Jersey's public system of higher education.
Founded in 1855 and was named after American ju ...
, the National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, and in the Art in Embassies Program Art in Embassies, an office within the U.S. Department of State, promotes cultural diplomacy through exhibitions, permanent collections, site-specific commissions and two-way artist exchanges in more than 200 U.S. Embassies and Consulates around the ...
in Minsk, Belarus.
In 2000, Larko was one of two artists awarded a commission by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts
The New Jersey State Council on the Arts was founded in 1966 to support artistic activities in the state of New Jersey. It is funded by the New Jersey State Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Art ...
and New Jersey Transit to create murals for the Secaucus Transfer Station, a major rail transit hub in northern New Jersey, and the largest train station in the state. The facility opened in 2003, with Larko's four murals occupying the North Mezzanine. Choosing "Four Corners" as her theme, the oil on stretched linen murals depict "four railroad bridges with historically appropriate trains from the four corners" 7of northern New Jersey. The four murals are: "Jersey City" and "Brielle", both measuring 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) by 27 ft 5 in (8.36 m), and "Delaware Water Gap" and West Trenton,” each measuring 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) by 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m).
In addition to exhibitions, Larko's works are in many private collections in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and abroad. Her paintings are also represented in several public collections including the Jersey City Museum, the Montclair Art Museum, the New Jersey State Museum, Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
, the Summit City Hall, and in the corporate collections of Johnson & Johnson, Fox Industries, MacArthur Petroleum, IMTT, and Cooper Alloy.
Awards
Larko has been the recipient of several awards. She twice won the National Academy of Design's annual Hallgarten Prize, in 1988 and 1992. She has been awarded a painting fellowship by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Newark Museum
The Newark Museum of Art (formerly known as the Newark Museum), in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States, is the state's largest museum. It holds major collections of American art, decorative arts, contemporary art, and arts of Asia, Af ...
's Artist in Residence Fellowship, and a residency fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson VT. In 2006, Larko was awarded a Strategic Opportunity Grant issued jointly by the New York State Council on the Arts
The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell (1905–1996), ...
and the New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...
, as well as a George Sugarman
George Sugarman (11 May 1912 – 25 August 1999) was an American artist working in the mediums of drawing, painting, and sculpture. Often described as controversial and forward-thinking, Sugarman's prolific body of work defies a definitive styl ...
Foundation Grant for painting. In 2009, Larko was honored with the Joyce Dutka Art Foundation Award for painting.
Teaching, curatorial and special projects
As a teacher, Larko has been a member of the faculty of the Visual Art Center of New Jersey in Summit since 1993, where she teaches Landscape Painting. Larko has a private teaching practice since 1999, and instructs classes in Europe and the northeastern United States. Larko served as Gallery Director of the Tomasulo Art Gallery at Union County College
Union College (formerly Union County College) is a public community college in Union County, New Jersey. It was founded in 1933 as the first of New Jersey's public community colleges. The college has four campuses: Cranford, Elizabeth, Plainfie ...
, Cranford, New Jersey, from 1996 to 2010. Larko also served as the curator for the majority of the gallery's exhibitions, and worked with guest curators for special projects.
In 2014, Larko and artist Laura James co-founded BX200, the Bronx Visual Artist Directory, a curated, online database of two-hundred artists identified with the Bronx.[Slattery, Dennis]
"Online directory Bronx 200 designed to connect Bronx artists"
''New York Daily News'', December 15, 2014
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
*Bellantoni, Ralph J., "Artist Valeri Larko Grew Up in Lake Parsippany, Captures Visual Poetry of Places", '' Daily Record'', July 1, 2013
*Williams, Austen R., "On Location at the Urban Fringe", ''American Artist'', September 2011, pages 55–59
*Fahlman, Betsy, "IA in Art: The Urban Industrial Landscapes of Valeri Larko", '' Society for Industrial Archeology Newsletter'', Summer, 2011, Volume 40, Number 3, pages 1,2
*Kalina, Rachel, "Valeri's Reality," ''Ins & Outs Magazine'', February/March 2012, pages 58–60
*McCleremont, Doug, "Valeri Larko, Morris Museum", '' ARTnews'', September 2010, pg. 122
*Herships, Jacqueline, "Finding Beauty in Industrial Landscapes", '' Summit Magazine'', Fall 2006
{{DEFAULTSORT:Larko, Valeri
1960 births
Living people
20th-century American women artists
21st-century American women artists
People from Freeport, New York
People from Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey
National Academy of Design alumni
Artists from New Rochelle, New York
Realist painters