Val Lyle works on the clay model for the guy in "Take the Stage."
Editor's Note: Val Lyle chose to write her own profile. We print it here edited for space.
I am an artist from here. Sounds simple, but that is the most influential element of my work. My family has lived here for generations. My mother's side is the family that founded Mountain City back when it was known as Shoun's Crossroads. On my father's side, the sprawling campuses of ETSU and Mountain Home were originally the family farm. My 89-year-old father farmed them as a boy with his six brothers, two sisters and widowed mother. I live in Bristol in a house my great-grandfather built for my grandfather, Isaac D. Eggers and his wife Lenoir Weeks, hauling the lumber over the mountain from their mill in Mountain City. That is as much a part of my art as my time in art school. I am from Appalachia. I am from this part of those beautiful mountains and valleys. They are part of me and every work of art that flows from me.
Last year I installed two large public artwork commissions in downtown Bristol, Virginia. The "Take the Stage" bronze figures (a gal playing fiddle and a guy playing guitar) across from the Birthplace of Country Music Museum are a wildly popular photo op with both locals and tourists. It is a great example of my working with a group (Art in Public Places Bristol) to collaborate on a shared vision. The spark happened when Mary Jane Miller saw interactive sculptures in Europe. She returned determined to create one for Bristol. From there, I did everything from the drawings, the scale models, the full-sized fully detailed enlargements, contracting for the foundation cement, contracting for the huge granite stone and its design, securing insurance for the project beginning to end, to coordinating the delivery of the stone and the bronzes (both from out of town) on the same day so that only one crane would be needed. Mary Jane Miller and Candy Snodgrass played pivotal roles in shepherding that project through. It was a labor of love for all of us. We are so grateful to Marcia and Marvin Gilliam Jr. Foundation for donating the sculptures to the people of Bristol.
The "Bristol's Heritage" sculpture made of stainless steel in front of the library had a completely different workflow. Mary Jane worked with artist Charles Vess to produce the sketch of the sculpture. From there I worked with Jim Gallucci to turn the paper image into a 16-foot stainless steel sculpture. My company, Art Now LLC, allows me to contract professional fabricators, metal shops, carpenters and additional artists if needed to get a big custom job completed on time in budget. It's important to get experienced people at each point in a project.
Other public artworks include a bronze of two children for CASA of Knoxville, a rope sculpture installed in Abingdon, Virginia, 10 small bronzes that form The Caterpillar Crawl in the Bristol twin cities, a commission of nine painted panels at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center, a large painting at Kingsport's Marriott Meadowview and a ceramic sculpture installed in the Culp Center at ETSU. I'm very excited about my next big public sculpture commission, which is a large custom kinetic piece and will be unveiled in June 2015.
For my own artwork the focus is on Appalachia and social justice. I change media when I begin to feel too comfortable with it. When my strokes become predictable or I notice a favorite color palette, it's time to switch it up. 2D, 3D, 4D, I go back and forth. It can be exhausting to start from scratch every day, but that's my choice, to keep it fresh, relevant, alive, to stay in touch with the current world. How could I possibly be making the same works a year later? I'm not the same person thinking the same things. The world is not the same place. My style is strong enough to carry different media. I tell young artists to write a new artist statement at least every six months. Not necessarily to show it to anyone, just to make sure they still have a pulse and are always thinking. My students described my college art classes as being like "intermediate philosophy where they get to make things, too." I like that.
I've been a professional artist for 26 years. Once I left East Tennessee to go see the world. As a young person I moved about every three years to different states until I landed in New York City, where I lived for nearly a decade. That's where my real art education took place, on the streets of Manhattan. I pondered deeply what to do with my life, and I decided to leave my job at Museums New York Magazine and my budding artist career to come back to my beautiful mountains to help young people who wanted to be artists. It was very hard for me starting out as an artist. I thought it shouldn't have to be this hard, maybe I can give somebody a hand up. An art student said to me, "Val, you are a real artist. Don't you get how rare that is? Just doing what you do is so inspirational to us, knowing that you are one of us, from here, and successful. You are helping us by example." I was floored, and it changed my paradigm.
My BFA is from Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida and my MFA is from ETSU. Of my 23 solo exhibitions, 11 were specifically about Appalachia, and another 50 juried group shows fill out my professional gallery career. I have works in museum, corporate and private collections. The Joan Mitchell Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Tennessee Arts Commission, ISE Cultural Foundation, New York Artists Space and Penland School of Crafts each awarded me grants and scholarships to continue my work. I write about art and artists, and have been written about extensively, including by Derek Guthrie, co-founder of The New Art Examiner and Edward Rubin, NYC art critic who gave me a full page in the NYArts International Edition in 2010. Of the over 800 college art students I have had the honor of teaching in my 14 years as an adjunct professor, dozens have gone on to graduate from institutions like Cranbrook, Chicago Institute of Art and San Francisco Art Institute in addition to VCU, UGA and other state colleges becoming college professors and professional artists and designers.
I am deeply grateful and humbled to be receiving this award. What touches me most deeply about AAME "s recognition of me as an artist is that it is from my community. Creating engaging visual art with my hands is my job. This is critical recognition not for me, but for our young people, who are trying to decide if there a future for them in the Tri-Cities or must they leave to make something of themselves.
READ ON:
Laura Ann Warner gives credit to others
