Valerie Constantino Artist Lecture

Sac State art faculty professor Valerie Constantino gave an artist lecture to accompany her solo exhibition at the Else Gallery at Sac State.  She briefly explained her past work before diving into the driving motivation behind her current show, Crossing Sublime (After After Nature).

Constantino works mostly with textiles, which to her, eventually became a metaphor to describe the material being.  She is interested in the position one holds relative to the land, or, the position of oneself—both as a material and physical being—in space.  She is also interested in reductive abstraction and simplifying experiences.  When working with her materials, she says she likes to listen to them, and to challenge their use. 

Transitioning into the ideas behind her current body of work, Contastino said she drew inspiration from a book by W.G. Sebald called After Nature.  In sum, the writing follows the story of three men connected by their questioning of humankind’s place in the natural world.  The first character is an artist, the second is an enlightened botanist explorer, and the third was the author himself.  So, in using this model of three characters, Valerie Constantino assumed the identity of two other women from history that she found inspiring.  Her idea was to produce work in the persona of these other people.  The two women she chose were artist Anne Ryan and Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova. 

One of the themes that Constantino wanted to address in her current body of work was the idea of working internally instead of using an expansive gesture.  This lead to her decision to work in a small scale, which she said, at times, was difficult and clumsy, as the materials that she worked with did not always cooperate.

Overall, the art came out great, and this lecture accompanied the exhibition well, as it provided greater depth to the artworks. (see following post for review of exhibition)

Valerie Constantino's website: http://www.valerieconstantino.net

Group of Sac State art students taking a photo with Professor Valerie Constantino