Valerie Hammond maintains a fluid artistic practice, distinguishable for her organic approach and deft interaction with different mediums. In all of her work, there is play between the material and the immaterial, the physical and the spiritual: the dichotomy between what is seen and the sensation it provokes. The works inhabit a space she is constantly searching for, straddling the indefinable boundary between presence and absence, material and immaterial, consciousness and the unconscious. Her artwork becomes emblematic not only of the people whose hands she has traced or the subjects she is drawing but of her own evolving artist process-testimony to the passing of time and the quiet dissolution of memory. Her work can be found in both private and public collections such as the Walker Art Center, the Library of Congress, The Fine Arts Museum Houston, The Progressive Art Collection, the Fidelity Collection, the New York Public Library’s print and drawing collection, The Chazen Museum, The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, The Grand Palais Museum, Paris and the Getty Museum. She is a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, and has exhibited in solo and group shows nationally and internationally.

Maggie Wright, Director Easton Foundation, Louise Bougeois Archive valeriehammond.com