In her new exhibition ORIGINATION, Valerie Hird returns to the four elements of nature explored in her previous work, THE FIFTH DAY. While that phase was devoted to the generation of those elements, this group describes their interaction in a timeless cycle of creation.
Hird depicts each element as a strand, interlacing itself with others and ultimately forming the Elemental Knot. The body of work itself operates much like a strand within the larger series, proving indispensable to the resulting layers of complexity. Valerie Hird’s imagery is the product of numerous trips through the Middle East, Central Asia and Latin America. Merging her experiences with the symbols of various creation mythologies, she has spun a multi-dimensional cosmology of her own. This amalgam is a complex and personal interpretation of enduring motifs, from the intertwined loops of Solomon’s Knot to the Islamic interlace patterns to the plaits of the Celtic crosses - even traces of the Chinese Yin and Yang can be discerned.
The scale of the content remains nimbly ambiguous, perpetually oscillating between macro and microscopic. In Matrix, elemental interplay is a tangled knot, both viscera and vista, which opens the door to species generation. In Mountain Bones, nature’s structures are a kind of skeleton, rising to act as a receptacle for what might be vegetation, or veins.
Using a suggestive language of colors, patterns and other recollections from Hird’s wanderings, ORIGINATION forges a contemporary understanding of ancient concepts about the history of our universe.
Valerie Hird graduated with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Vermont College. In 2008 she was granted an award from the Community Foundation of Vermont. Hird has worked and travelled throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, and South America. Likewise, she has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. Her work belongs to such public and corporate collections as The Rhode Island School of Design, Providence RI, The Fleming Museum, Burlington VT, The Exxon Corporation, Dallas, TX, and Pfizer Inc., among others. Born in Massachusetts in 1955, Hird Moved to Vermont in 1979, where she currently lives and works.
