ANDREW VALLEE
Artist Statement
As a sculptor working with wood I embrace the notion that this endeavor is a collaboration with nature. There is no blank canvas. Having a technical and aesthetic understanding of the material is essential. Trees live, breathe and move when they stand. When a tree falls and lands in the hands of a carpenter or sculptor that tree continues to breathe and move. Wood will expand and contract with its environment.
Creatures and artifacts of the sea, sky and forest are frequent subjects of my work. The first step in creating my work is to seek to understand my subject as thoroughly as possible. Understanding proportion, scale and texture are critical. Attempting to understand the spirit is paramount. Of equal importance is selecting the material. Wood comes in a seemingly infinite variety of color, hardness and characteristics of grain. I make the decision about what wood I am going to use based on the subject matter I am going to portray.
I balance precise replication and proportion, with subtle abstraction of form and texture. When carving I respond to the form as the sculpture develops. I simplify my subject into its most essential elements. A respect for subject and material are always kept in mind, if I succeed the spirit of a tree will have a second life.
Biography
Much of my early childhood was spent wandering the hardwood forests of Pennsylvania. This connection with the natural world has informed my work for decades. I was raised in the celebrated artistic community of New Hope, PA. My childhood friend was the grandson of George Nakashima. The time I spent in Nakashima’s studio and home, and being exposed to his philosophies, has had a lifelong impact on me as an artist.
At an early age I was recognized as a hardworking and prolific artist. I have maintained an active studio practice since the age of twelve. As a teenager my family moved to the Pacific Northwest. I continued to wander in greater forests with larger trees.
I studied art while in university, graduating in 1996 with a fine arts degree. Upon graduation, I took a job as an apprentice to a master furniture maker. I learned a great deal about woodworking that has been a technical base for creating wood sculpture for which I am primarily known for today.
As a young man I traveled from Northwest Washington to the Arctic Ocean of coastal Alaska. I traveled and lived in my truck, turning my campsites into makeshift outdoor studios. Working with materials scavenged from construction sites and creating artwork along the way. Eventually I settled in Edison, Washington, a tiny town of artists and creatives in the bucolic Skagit Valley, with my wife and two daughters.
My studio practice has always included painting, drawing, wood sculpting, installation and conceptual art. It has evolved to include bronze and glass sculpture.
As a sculptor working with wood I embrace the notion that this endeavor is a collaboration with nature. There is no blank canvas. Having a technical and aesthetic understanding of the material is essential. Trees live, breathe and move when they stand. When a tree falls and lands in the hands of a carpenter or sculptor that tree continues to breathe and move. Wood will expand and contract with its environment.
Creatures and artifacts of the sea, sky and forest are frequent subjects of my work. The first step in creating my work is to seek to understand my subject as thoroughly as possible. Understanding proportion, scale and texture are critical. Attempting to understand the spirit is paramount. Of equal importance is selecting the material. Wood comes in a seemingly infinite variety of color, hardness and characteristics of grain. I make the decision about what wood I am going to use based on the subject matter I am going to portray.
I balance precise replication and proportion, with subtle abstraction of form and texture. When carving I respond to the form as the sculpture develops. I simplify my subject into its most essential elements. A respect for subject and material are always kept in mind, if I succeed the spirit of a tree will have a second life.
Biography
Much of my early childhood was spent wandering the hardwood forests of Pennsylvania. This connection with the natural world has informed my work for decades. I was raised in the celebrated artistic community of New Hope, PA. My childhood friend was the grandson of George Nakashima. The time I spent in Nakashima’s studio and home, and being exposed to his philosophies, has had a lifelong impact on me as an artist.
At an early age I was recognized as a hardworking and prolific artist. I have maintained an active studio practice since the age of twelve. As a teenager my family moved to the Pacific Northwest. I continued to wander in greater forests with larger trees.
I studied art while in university, graduating in 1996 with a fine arts degree. Upon graduation, I took a job as an apprentice to a master furniture maker. I learned a great deal about woodworking that has been a technical base for creating wood sculpture for which I am primarily known for today.
As a young man I traveled from Northwest Washington to the Arctic Ocean of coastal Alaska. I traveled and lived in my truck, turning my campsites into makeshift outdoor studios. Working with materials scavenged from construction sites and creating artwork along the way. Eventually I settled in Edison, Washington, a tiny town of artists and creatives in the bucolic Skagit Valley, with my wife and two daughters.
My studio practice has always included painting, drawing, wood sculpting, installation and conceptual art. It has evolved to include bronze and glass sculpture.
Essay by: Sarah Clark-Langager ©SC-L, January 2024
Andrew Vallee’s art encapsulates many discoveries in various lands. His landscape continues to be the marine ecosystem of the Salish Sea which stretches from the northern Strait of Georgia to south Puget Sound and west to the mouth of Strait Juan de Fuca where the Salish Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. Most recently, Vallee has extended his discovery to the Pacific Rim, specifically the Hawaiian Islands. Time—human memories and natural ongoing movements—with space—land, water and sky—unite in his theme of a place.
Vallee collects nature’s objects—stone, shell, tree leaf, sand dollar, whale bone, etc. — originally from the shores of the Salish Sea as studies for his wood and bronze sculptures. While attuned to the intrinsic quality of each natural object and, then, to his carefully chosen material, he creates works which reverberate with references to the greater principle of combining minute and larger operations of life. He achieves this through his variation of materials for a theme and attention to a simple shape within a setting. Several works dating around 2020 exemplify this principle: In Edison, No. 2, the maple stone, pearl and/or moon is elegantly centered on the maple half shell; in No. 3 (bronze, bigleaf maple) it is taken to another level where it is enveloped in the bronze’s reflections, as if moving within rippling waters; is this a moon pool? The single, bronze Scallop, No. 3 is fitted into a dark box reminiscent of the greater topography of land or ocean floor. A fragment of the bronze shellfish in Samish Clam, No. 2 is broken off to open to its world inside. In Vallee’s works the wood and bronze moon is ancient yet forever radiates its light, sometimes full or waning, other times shifting dramatically from “light to dark” (Dark and Light, yellow cedar). Similar to the small object within water or a larger layer of topography, Pale Moon shows the impact of meteorites from outer space, craters on the moon’s surface. On a small scale Vallee has also reinforced the push and pull between microscopic and macro forces in his whale sculptures. In the painted cedar Black Whale the circle shape could be the small eye orbits on each side of the whale’s skull or the blowhole through which it breathes. But in the Bronze Whale the circle with multiple reflections evokes the breach of the whale and its bulge uniting with the tidal effect of the moon on the oceans.
While Vallee has continued to focus on the intricacy of each work with his characteristic soothing tactility, he lately has developed a broader sweep of time as exemplified in Maple Leaf Redux (maple, ply, graphite). This emphasis on time began in Vallee’s and Wes Smith’s imaginative exhibition The Tree Project at the Whatcom Museum in 2002. The project consisted of locating and processing a single tree. They chose a bigleaf maple—known to the Native Americans as “the paddle tree”—because it would give them the latitude to create an ample body of products. Within a broad context of the museum’s vintage photographs of colonization and history of the northwest timber industry and their own use of today’s sustainable forestry, the 118 year old tree (growth from 1882) perfected its life in their artistic mode of live-edge furniture with shades of the 19th century Arts and Crafts Movement and the 20th century furniture master George Nakashima. As an aside, it is important to note that the “living tree” of Mark Dion’s Seattle Vivarium in the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park would happen four years later and with an emphasis on science in a sculpture park, not the transformation of a material into art. In Maple Leaf Redux Vallee “brings back, brings forth” the leaf literally emerging/rising out of the flat ply plane. In 2014 Vallee and Smith called attention to a 350 year old fir tree buried in the muddy ground for over 2,300 years ago. While exhibiting an Extraction from this fir, Vallee reinforced the idea of a tree’s age and its potentially ever growing lines in his sculpture Maple Leaf Redux. As with the earlier union of shell with topography of land in Scallop, No. 3, Vallee extends his interest in surface features and evolving patterns to Samish Valley Soil (soil on plywood, not canvas) and in the reoccurring movement of waves in Reflection No. 1- 32 (plywood).
And, it is not any old shell he picks up but the chambered ones, such as the short- lived clam and scallop as well as the ancient, prehistoric spiraled Nautilus (spalted maple) and Ammonite (bronze). There is a human connectivity in his selection in that these mollusks are housed; or he simulates an imprint—like a foot presence buried in sand— as in Half Shell (curly maple); and finally, he recalls human time in A Damaged Pearl by displaying the artifact of a 33 caliber bullet found in the spalted maple while making the shell. One Hawaiian shell which has attracted Vallee is the Opihi which some have labeled a miniature Mt. Fuji. In Sperm Whale he used the real Opihi shell as a base to thrust into the sky the largest toothed whale from the deep Pacific Ocean. In this work and several others, Vallee reaches back to reference two facts in time. First, he draws on his printmaking and drawing skills and his knowledge of wood—here, driftwood—to refer to scrimshaw, the decorative carving of shells and bone by indigenous people and sailors on long voyages. Secondly, he captures the historical landing of the first European—Captain James Cook—in the Hawaiian Islands, specifically Waimea, Kauai in 1778 in HMS Resolution (ink on driftwood). No doubt Vallee is aware of Cook’s explorations, especially the Captain’s attention to mapping and describing the topography of lands as well as his support of the scientists aboard his ship who were studying and documenting the flora and fauna. In his own study of the palm tree on Kauai,Vallee compares its fibrous root system spreading around the base of the tree to a slithering Snake. But more importantly, he uses the decayed, pock-marked skin of an old door to evoke the long voyages of both whale and the naval British officer as well as to hint at the whaling industry and Cook’s tension with the natives resulting in his demise on his third voyage to Hawaii (Landing at Waimea).
While historical voyages have recently appeared in Vallee’s work, it is his own personal walks and trips across seas which matter in his art. His discoveries pertain to the overall universal, natural, and seasonal movements on the land and in the sky and water. The rich Samish soil where he lives attracts snow geese as they cross in their round trips from north to south each year. In his new spray paintings he highlights the intersection of these flocks of migrating birds among the changing lights in the sky and the reflections from moving currents of both sky and water. However, it is the painting Twenty which is the key to understanding why Vallee is not repeating the work of numerous older artists in the Northwest associated with bird imagery, such as Tony Angel and Phillip McCracken. In Twenty there is an “avalanche” of thoughts; it is a collage merging the image of the artist standing in a doorway with images of birds, snakes, leopard, stars, lips, numbers, honeycomb, etc.—this is a “collision” of the old and the new. As in his new installation of swallows (bronze), the bird once inhabiting the Samish barn is not static for a naturalistic rendering but is a swift in flight with spread wings reflecting the currents. Vallee is of his own contemporary time, building his time in space.
Sarah Clark-Langager ©SC-L, January 2024
Andrew Vallee’s art encapsulates many discoveries in various lands. His landscape continues to be the marine ecosystem of the Salish Sea which stretches from the northern Strait of Georgia to south Puget Sound and west to the mouth of Strait Juan de Fuca where the Salish Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. Most recently, Vallee has extended his discovery to the Pacific Rim, specifically the Hawaiian Islands. Time—human memories and natural ongoing movements—with space—land, water and sky—unite in his theme of a place.
Vallee collects nature’s objects—stone, shell, tree leaf, sand dollar, whale bone, etc. — originally from the shores of the Salish Sea as studies for his wood and bronze sculptures. While attuned to the intrinsic quality of each natural object and, then, to his carefully chosen material, he creates works which reverberate with references to the greater principle of combining minute and larger operations of life. He achieves this through his variation of materials for a theme and attention to a simple shape within a setting. Several works dating around 2020 exemplify this principle: In Edison, No. 2, the maple stone, pearl and/or moon is elegantly centered on the maple half shell; in No. 3 (bronze, bigleaf maple) it is taken to another level where it is enveloped in the bronze’s reflections, as if moving within rippling waters; is this a moon pool? The single, bronze Scallop, No. 3 is fitted into a dark box reminiscent of the greater topography of land or ocean floor. A fragment of the bronze shellfish in Samish Clam, No. 2 is broken off to open to its world inside. In Vallee’s works the wood and bronze moon is ancient yet forever radiates its light, sometimes full or waning, other times shifting dramatically from “light to dark” (Dark and Light, yellow cedar). Similar to the small object within water or a larger layer of topography, Pale Moon shows the impact of meteorites from outer space, craters on the moon’s surface. On a small scale Vallee has also reinforced the push and pull between microscopic and macro forces in his whale sculptures. In the painted cedar Black Whale the circle shape could be the small eye orbits on each side of the whale’s skull or the blowhole through which it breathes. But in the Bronze Whale the circle with multiple reflections evokes the breach of the whale and its bulge uniting with the tidal effect of the moon on the oceans.
While Vallee has continued to focus on the intricacy of each work with his characteristic soothing tactility, he lately has developed a broader sweep of time as exemplified in Maple Leaf Redux (maple, ply, graphite). This emphasis on time began in Vallee’s and Wes Smith’s imaginative exhibition The Tree Project at the Whatcom Museum in 2002. The project consisted of locating and processing a single tree. They chose a bigleaf maple—known to the Native Americans as “the paddle tree”—because it would give them the latitude to create an ample body of products. Within a broad context of the museum’s vintage photographs of colonization and history of the northwest timber industry and their own use of today’s sustainable forestry, the 118 year old tree (growth from 1882) perfected its life in their artistic mode of live-edge furniture with shades of the 19th century Arts and Crafts Movement and the 20th century furniture master George Nakashima. As an aside, it is important to note that the “living tree” of Mark Dion’s Seattle Vivarium in the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park would happen four years later and with an emphasis on science in a sculpture park, not the transformation of a material into art. In Maple Leaf Redux Vallee “brings back, brings forth” the leaf literally emerging/rising out of the flat ply plane. In 2014 Vallee and Smith called attention to a 350 year old fir tree buried in the muddy ground for over 2,300 years ago. While exhibiting an Extraction from this fir, Vallee reinforced the idea of a tree’s age and its potentially ever growing lines in his sculpture Maple Leaf Redux. As with the earlier union of shell with topography of land in Scallop, No. 3, Vallee extends his interest in surface features and evolving patterns to Samish Valley Soil (soil on plywood, not canvas) and in the reoccurring movement of waves in Reflection No. 1- 32 (plywood).
And, it is not any old shell he picks up but the chambered ones, such as the short- lived clam and scallop as well as the ancient, prehistoric spiraled Nautilus (spalted maple) and Ammonite (bronze). There is a human connectivity in his selection in that these mollusks are housed; or he simulates an imprint—like a foot presence buried in sand— as in Half Shell (curly maple); and finally, he recalls human time in A Damaged Pearl by displaying the artifact of a 33 caliber bullet found in the spalted maple while making the shell. One Hawaiian shell which has attracted Vallee is the Opihi which some have labeled a miniature Mt. Fuji. In Sperm Whale he used the real Opihi shell as a base to thrust into the sky the largest toothed whale from the deep Pacific Ocean. In this work and several others, Vallee reaches back to reference two facts in time. First, he draws on his printmaking and drawing skills and his knowledge of wood—here, driftwood—to refer to scrimshaw, the decorative carving of shells and bone by indigenous people and sailors on long voyages. Secondly, he captures the historical landing of the first European—Captain James Cook—in the Hawaiian Islands, specifically Waimea, Kauai in 1778 in HMS Resolution (ink on driftwood). No doubt Vallee is aware of Cook’s explorations, especially the Captain’s attention to mapping and describing the topography of lands as well as his support of the scientists aboard his ship who were studying and documenting the flora and fauna. In his own study of the palm tree on Kauai,Vallee compares its fibrous root system spreading around the base of the tree to a slithering Snake. But more importantly, he uses the decayed, pock-marked skin of an old door to evoke the long voyages of both whale and the naval British officer as well as to hint at the whaling industry and Cook’s tension with the natives resulting in his demise on his third voyage to Hawaii (Landing at Waimea).
While historical voyages have recently appeared in Vallee’s work, it is his own personal walks and trips across seas which matter in his art. His discoveries pertain to the overall universal, natural, and seasonal movements on the land and in the sky and water. The rich Samish soil where he lives attracts snow geese as they cross in their round trips from north to south each year. In his new spray paintings he highlights the intersection of these flocks of migrating birds among the changing lights in the sky and the reflections from moving currents of both sky and water. However, it is the painting Twenty which is the key to understanding why Vallee is not repeating the work of numerous older artists in the Northwest associated with bird imagery, such as Tony Angel and Phillip McCracken. In Twenty there is an “avalanche” of thoughts; it is a collage merging the image of the artist standing in a doorway with images of birds, snakes, leopard, stars, lips, numbers, honeycomb, etc.—this is a “collision” of the old and the new. As in his new installation of swallows (bronze), the bird once inhabiting the Samish barn is not static for a naturalistic rendering but is a swift in flight with spread wings reflecting the currents. Vallee is of his own contemporary time, building his time in space.
Sarah Clark-Langager ©SC-L, January 2024
EDUCATION
BA Printmaking, Western Washington University, 1996 Apprenticeship with Master Woodworker Alan Rosen, 1997-1998
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Trans Pacific (solo) | Smith & Vallee Gallery, October 2023, Edison, Washington
Seattle Art Fair - July 2023, Seattle, Washington
Kris Ekstrand | Andrew Vallee - Smith & Vallee Gallery, January 2021, Edison, Wash. Patty Haller | Andrew Vallee - Smith & Vallee Gallery, September 2019, Edison, Wash. Seattle Art Fair - August 2019, Seattle, Washington
Lisa McShane | Andrew Vallee - Smith & Vallee Gallery, November 2018, Edison, Wash. Works in Wood (solo) | Placeware Gallery, 2016, Gualala, California
Valandani | Andrew Vallee - Smith & Vallee Gallery, 2015, Edison, Washington
Group Show | Genesis Gallery, 2012, Kohalaha, Hawaii
Landscapes and Other Places (solo) | Kipple Gallery, 2005, Bellingham, Washington Fresh, Annual Artist’s Invitational | Edison Eye Gallery, 2005, Edison, Washington Pages From an Unknown Book (solo) | Village Books Gallery, 2005, Bellingham, Wash. Forensics | Hand to Mouth Gallery, 2004, Bellingham, Washington
Maslow Gallery (solo) - 2002, Bellingham, Washington
Tails...Tales, Annual Artist’s Invitational | Edison Eye Gallery, 1997, Edison, Washington Gabriel Hounds | 1997, Bellingham, Washington
Somnolence, Annual Artist’s Invitational | Edison Eye Gallery, 1996, Edison, Washington A Print Environment | Cornish College of the Arts, 1995, Seattle, Washington
State of Things | Viking Union Gallery, 1995, Bellingham, Washington
Images of Men | Viking Union Gallery, 1994, Bellingham, Washington
MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS
Portrait of a Stone | Bainbridge Art Museum, 2014, Bainbridge Island, Washington From the Forest | Whatcom Historical Museum, 2009, Bellingham, Washington
The Tree Project, Andrew Vallee and W.A. Smith | Whatcom Historical Museum, 2002, Bellingham, Washington
Annual Juried Auction | Museum of Northwest Art, LaConner, Washington
AWARDS
Distinguished Alumni Award | Western Washington University School of Fine Art - 2019 Printmaking (first place ) | Skagit Valley College Art Competition - 1988
Art Student of the Year | Oak Harbor High School
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