NYAB Event - Valerie Hammond "Threshold"

Valerie Hammond "Threshold"

Littlejohn Contemporary

This event has ended.

Littlejohn Contemporary presents an exhibition of sculpture, works on paper and prints by Valerie Hammond.

In this body of work, the artist draws inspiration from religious effigies, devotional objects, and the enchantment of nature. A sense of the spirit world is palpable in her work. Surprisingly unsentimental, her creative approach filters through a deep understanding of art history and its political and cultural determinants. Hammond is a dedicated printmaker and teaches etching at Columbia University and New York University. The inherently repetitive and reflective elements of printmaking are fundamental aspects of her work in other mediums as well.

Hammond’s delicate drawings (Who Killed Cock Robin) stem from childhood memories of a beloved fairy- painting, an illustration of an old English nursery rhyme, “Who Killed Cock Robin.” While the poem, in which various birds prepare for the burial of a murdered friend, may have had larger political implications, Hammond links her drawings to personal themes of memory, youth and death, referencing, in particular, the loss of her mother. In the drawings, bats hover, stems intertwine, and birds mesh with butterflies and flowers. The natural world’s cyclical disintegration and re-growth suggests a kind of universal story-telling, the seasons providing beginning and end.

Hammond’s glowing, red-orange ink is reminiscent of blood; capillary-like leaves reference the human body. Ethereal pencil lines counterbalance the red’s viscosity, evoking a place where the material and immaterial collide.

~~ above are portions of an essay by Maggie Wright that accompanies a concurrent exhibition entitled “Papertails” curated by Valerie Hammond and Kiki Smith at NYU’s 80 Washington Square East Galleries~~

[Image: Valerie Hammond "Rose" (2011) detail, wax, silk, wire, 9 x 8 x 4 ½ in.]

Media

• Drawing
• Prints
• Sculpture

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