Valerie Bunnell
Easthampton, Massachusetts
Ceramic Sculpture

I have always been drawn to the outdoors. I love exploring landscapes, collecting and arranging things I find there. Nature offers me its patterns, colors and textures for inspiration -- as does the urban landscape of my present home in the Boston area.

It was never difficult for me to imagine the artifacts of nature as retaining life, even when they are no longer alive. I will never forget the antiques and folk art my mother collected, and how they mystified and thrilled me. Old dolls, marionettes and puppets continue to fascinate me with their enigmatic spirits and hidden past lives. As an artist I have always wanted to create unusual objects that could refer to other realities, and which would possess a mysterious logic of existence.

My first ceramic figure began as a kind of re-creation of an antique doll. Thinking of the story of Icarus, I experimented with the addition of wings to subsequent figures, which gave them a sense of potential and energy. In fact, all my figures have become explorations of spirit which exists between the make-believe and the real. I locate characters in this in-between place by drawing on my imagination, memory, and experience of nature and culture. As I carve, texture and mark the clay, a narrative identity emerges. Found objects, both natural and man-made inform this identity as well. The narrative implications of the work seem to originate as much with the viewer as with myself. I see this viewer participation as the final step in the animation of the figures.

Born in Long Island, NY. Bunnell received a BS from University of Vermont in 1977 (minoring in ceramics). She then spent several years in apprenticeships and studio situations in New England to eventually go on to design and built a passive solar home in Vermont. Bunnell later attended Peters Valley Craft Center, 1986 to receive a BFA from University of Massachusetts in 1988 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990. She taught ceramics at Triton College, 1991, was a full-time studio artist living and working in Chicago from 1990 until 2002, and in the Boston area from 2002-2007.

Recently relocated to western Massachusetts Bunnell now lives there with her husband and daughter.