Andrée Valley: LunART Festival 2026 Commissioned Artist
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Andrée Valley’s work is about shape, color with a bit of fun. Her sculptural goals primarily explore abstraction and are based upon perceived chaos. Her sculptures hang on the wall, sit on the floor or table, or swivel freely when hung from the ceiling. They explore randomness, orientation and color. Shape, color, pattern, piling, stacking, and tangling permit viewing one form and pattern through another. With few exceptions, her work is abstract and could be described as a collage of shape and color that is inspired by science and music, with some irony. Andrée’s artistic interests are wide-ranging. She began her career in ceramic sculpture and evolved to working in metal, now her primary medium. Other projects include 3-D paper collages, experimenting with the symphonic medium, and working as graphic artist and as a gallerist. Andrée lives and works in Madison, Wisconsin, and is retired from teaching in the Art Department at Madison College. She received a BFA from the University of Denver and an MFA from the University of Michigan and spent two years as Artist in Residence at the Archie Bray Foundation.
Why do you think organizations like LunART are important in today’s climate?
Women tend to be marginalized, patronized and not taken seriously in the artistic world. An organization such as LunART gives women a platform for their artistic expression and a comfort zone allowing them to excel and experiment on equal footing.
What medium do you prefer to work in and why?
I think in three dimensions and in color. Color makes me happy. I began my career in ceramic sculpture loving the immediacy of working with a material that could be easily shaped, manipulated and added to. However, clay had limitations of scale and my ideas outgrew this material. These ideas worked well in metal and I began working in welded steel and eventually gravitated toward working in aluminum which is easier to bend, manipulate and paint. This suited working in a smaller sized studio especially after I began working with a local metal fabricating factory to cut, bend and sometimes paint my pieces. I also transfer my working techniques to painted paper making smaller abstract 3-D collages as maquettes for larger pieces.
When did you start practicing your art? What were your early influences?
Growing up, my parents encouraged me to make and fabricate rather than purchase. As a result, I always had multiple projects going such as making collages, fabricating presents for others and dreaming up things that would be fun to make. My family had a garage full of hand tools with ample working space. I grew up on the ocean south of Boston. One time my friends and I wanted to learn how to surf and rather than purchase a surfboard, we purchased a kit and made it ourselves in my garage. It was hard work, the results were not perfect, but this shared board taught us how to carve foam, work with fiberglass, imbed paint and come away with pride in our creation. We also taught ourselves how to surf with our finished board.
What role, if any, does technology play in your artistic process?
Technology in one form or another is an integral part of creating and fabricating my sculpture and illustrations. For my sculptural work, I visualize what I want to make as separate shapes collaged together. I then design each shape to scale on Adobe Illustrator for cutting in aluminum at a local metal fabrication factory. My aluminum shapes are then cut with a laser cutter at a local factory. Book covers, program covers and other 2-d work I produce is done using Illustrator, photoshop or using an apple pencil on my iPad.
If you were to have a dinner party with 3 artists from history, who would you invite and why?
Nancy Graves whose work was colorful and wild, inspired me. Martha Argerich, my favorite pianist Donna Leon, a mystery novelist whose characters are sympathetically humanistic with novels set in one of my favorite cities.
What project are you currently working on? What is your favorite aspect of the project? Why?
I am working on something that is totally different for me inspired by our nation’s politics of exclusion. This series is called Facial Recognition and are abstractions of figures and faces. This is the first time I have done anything so overtly political but am driven to try in some way to express inclusion rather than exclusion that I feel is so important in our shrinking world. The world is shrinking due to technology as communication and transportation advances. People are closer yet so far apart. The latest relatively modest sized pieces are in response to living in this world in the hope that we can embrace each other and celebrate our uniqueness.
Andrée's work with LunART
Each year, LunART commissions original works by women composers and visual artists, supporting the creation of groundbreaking new music and interdisciplinary collaborations. This initiative brings together artists across disciplines to develop compelling premieres that reflect the organization's mission and artistic vision. By investing in new work, LunART not only expands the contemporary repertoire but also amplifies diverse voices and fosters innovative artistic exchange.
"The artwork is a visual exploration of sound and how different sounds are put together into a cohesive unit. My art work has always been a response to music and its structure. I think of music in an abstract way in that sounds are shapes and color. Layering of shapes, negative spaces and their interweaving mimic the complication of a measure, bar, or page of music. I remember reading a while ago on the scientific difference between an electronic sound and an analogue sound. The difference is in its depth or sound. Rather than one or two oscillating lines measured from an electronic string, the sound produced from a plucked or rubbed string, divorced from electronics, have signals that are complicated and messy, rendering the sound with depth and I suppose you could say an emotional quality. Throughout my career as a visual artist, I have always tried to use this quality, in an abstract way, in my work through shape, color and their tangling and layering within the piece. Resonance describe these concepts. The artwork abstractly mimics sound vibrations, layerings, tempo and color of music."
Andrée's original print will be available at our festival!
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