Valerie Maynard

Valerie Jean Maynard (August 22, 1937 – September 19, 2022) was an American sculptor, teacher, printmaker, and designer. 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. In 2021, she received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

Career

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

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, held between November 2007 and March 2008.

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 —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. The clenched fist was associated with the liberation of African Americans and is considered an indispensable part of the body in many African societies.

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.

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." 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.

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

Solo exhibitions

1971 American International College, Springfield, Massachusetts 1973 Howard University, Washington, D.C. 1974 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 1975 Riksutställningar, Stockholm, Sweden (traveling) 1983 Reichhold Center for the Arts, University of the Virgin Islands, Saint Thomas 1988 New Visions Gallery, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 1988 Caribbean Cultural Center, New York 1989 Hammonds House Museum, Atlanta, Georgia 1990 Roadworks, Dorsey Gallery, Brooklyn, New York 1991 Towne Art Gallery, Wheelock College, Boston, Massachusetts 1992 Compton Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1994 Roots Through the Heart, Hartnett Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 2017 Devotion, New Door Creative, Baltimore, Maryland 2020 Lost and Found, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

Collections Maynard's work is held in the following permanent collections: Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore Bennett College, Greensboro, North Carolina Brooklyn Museum, New York Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, New York National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, Ohio National Museum of Mozambique National Museum of Nigeria, Lagos Riksutställningar, Stockholm, Sweden Studio Museum in Harlem, New York