Valerie Maynard
Maynard at her exhibition "Lost and Found" at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 2020
Born
Valerie Jean Maynard

(1937-08-22)August 22, 1937
New York City, U.S.
DiedSeptember 19, 2022(2022-09-19) (aged 85)
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Education
Notable workPolyrhythmics of Consciousness and Light, 2003
MovementThe Black Arts Movement

Valerie Jean Maynard (August 22, 1937 – September 19, 2022) was an American sculptor, teacher, printmaker, and designer.[1] Maynard's work frequently addressed themes of social inequality and the civil rights movement.

Her work has been exhibited in the United States, Sweden[1] and Lagos, Nigeria.[2] She had been selected for residencies in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and New York City and received a New York Foundation for the Arts grant in printmaking.[1] Maynard resided in Baltimore, Maryland.

Early life and education

Born in Manhattan on August 22, 1937,[3][4] to William and Willie Fred (Pratt) Maynard, Valerie Maynard grew up on West 142nd Street. She studied painting and drawing at the Museum of Modern Art, printmaking at the New School for Social Research and received a master's degree in Art/Sculpture in 1977 at Vermont's Goddard College.[5][1] In 2021, she received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).[6]

Career

Valerie Maynard's work Polyrhythmics of Consciousness and Light at 125th Street subway station in NYC

Maynard taught at the Studio Museum in Harlem, at Howard University, the University of the Virgin Islands,[7] and the Baltimore School for the Arts. She was artist in residence at both the Rochester Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[7]

She also specialized in the preservation and restoration of traditional art by people of color[1] and was a cognitive in the Black Arts Movement.[8]

Maynard was artist-in-residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem where she was a part of a group exhibition Labor, Love, Live Collection in Context,[9] held between November 2007 and March 2008.[10]

Maynard's attention to social inequality solidified during the 1960s and 1970s trial of her brother, William Maynard. Mr. Maynard was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent six years in prison before he was vindicated[11]—events drawn upon her sculpture We are Tied to the Very Beginning where Maynard reflects upon the Civil Rights Movements during the 1960s and 1970s.[12] The aesthetics of African identity appear in the construction of the head on the figure and its clenched fist. The head is a prominent part in many of Maynard's figures, and references the distorted quality of African art work made by the Igbo or Yoruba people.[12] The clenched fist was associated with the liberation of African Americans and is considered an indispensable part of the body in many African societies.[12] It "relates the African-American body politic to its cultural and spiritual roots in Africa. Second, it uses this connection to reinforce the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s and 1970s during which the raised clenched fist salute."[12] By re-contextualizing these motifs present from the Middle Passage to the Civil Rights Movement into her work, Maynard offered commentary on the struggle of those in the African diaspora to achieve and maintain equal rights.

In January 1977, Maynard was part of a contingent of hundreds of African-American artists who represented the North American Zone, exhibiting in FESTAC 77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos, Nigeria.[2]

In 2003, Maynard was commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to create a series of glass mosaic murals entitled Polyrhythmics of Consciousness and Light. The public art work remains permanently installed in the subway station on 125th Street in New York City.[4][13]

Karen Berisford Getty examines Maynard's synthesis of African elements in her 2005 Virginia Commonwealth University thesis, "Searching for Transatlantic Freedom: The Art of Valerie Maynard."[12]

In November 2015, Maynard presented at the Art of Justice: Articulating an Ethos and Aesthetic of the Movement conference at New York University[14] sponsored by the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute in collaboration with the Department of Art and Public Policy, New York University, the Institute of African American Affairs, New York University, and the Institute for Research in African American Studies, Columbia University.[15]

Maynard died from a cardiac arrhythmia at a hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 19, 2022, at the age of 85.[3]

Solo exhibitions

[16]

Collections

Maynard's work is held in the following permanent collections:[16]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Valerie Maynard - NYC Department of Cultural Affairs". www.nyc.gov. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  2. 1 2 "Festac 77 Contact Sheet #251:... - Festac 77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture | Facebook". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  3. 1 2 Williams, Alex (1 October 2022). "Valerie Maynard, An Artist Who Celebrated Black Identity, Dies at 85". New York Times. Vol. 172, no. 59563. p. B10. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 1 October 2022.
  4. 1 2 "Artwork: Polyrhythmics of Consciousness and Light (Valerie Maynard)". NYC Subway Art Tour. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  5. ↑ Robinson, Jontyle Theresa, ed. (1996). Bearing Witness: Contemporary Works by African American Women Artists. New York: Spelman College and Rizzoli. pp. 136. ISBN 9780847819621. OCLC 34076345.
  6. ↑ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: MICA Commencement 2021. YouTube.
  7. 1 2 Farrington, Lisa E. (2005). Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists. Oxford University Press. p. 272. ISBN 9780195167214.
  8. ↑ "Valerie Maynard « Black Portraiture[s] Conferences". www.blackportraitures.info. Retrieved 16 March 2018.
  9. ↑ "VALERIE MAYNARD: Artist in Print in exhibit at the Arts Horizons LeRoy Neiman Art Center". Arts Horizons. 12 April 2017. Retrieved 16 March 2018.
  10. ↑ "Labor, Love, Live | The Studio Museum in Harlem". www.studiomuseum.org. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  11. ↑ Porter, Evette (1990). "Valerie Maynard: Like a Prayer". Essence (5): 81.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 Getty, Karen Berisford (2005). "Searching for the Transatlantic Freedom: The Art of Valerie Maynard". scholarscompass.vcu.edu. Virginia Commonwealth University. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
  13. ↑ "Artwork: Polyrhythmics of Consciousness and Light (Valerie Maynard". NYC Subway Art Tour. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  14. ↑ "The Art of Justice: Articulating an Ethos and Aesthetic of the Movement". NYU TISCH. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  15. ↑ "Save the Date THE ART OF JUSTICE". cccadi.org. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  16. 1 2 Riggs, Thomas (1997). St. James Guide to Black Artists. Detroit, MI: St. James Press. pp. 354–355. ISBN 1558622209.
  17. ↑ Carroll, Angela (13 December 2017). ""Human-Beingness" According to Valerie Maynard". BmoreArt.
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