Clark Valentine

The late monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh famously likened our acts of compassion with meditation bells. Each chime of a bell brings a meditation practitioner back into a state of full awareness. He believed that no act is more transformative and healing than sitting fully present in one’s own being.

​

Clark Valentine believes that art functions as another meditation chime, inviting each viewer into a space of unwavering self-awareness. The geometries of his drawings seek a tension between movement and stillness, becoming objects of contemplation and presentness. In the gallery, his images cultivate a chapel space where visitors can commune both with others and their own souls. Each mark that he draws documents a moment in time, an exploration of his own being, and is a proposal of who we can become through care and sensitivity. 

​

Clark's first path as an adult was one towards Christian ministry. As a student, driven by an urgency to serve his generation, he was compelled to help others in the realm of spiritual things. Even as a young person, losing friends to suicide; seeing the devastation of early social media on the psyche; and experiencing the loneliness of young people being trapped within themselves, he felt a pull beyond himself to help others find spiritual purpose. Through some chance of fate, Clark found himself studying art in college. He did not grow up as an artist. Additionally, he was working full-time on staff at a church while in school - pursuing what he thought was his calling. But the university art classroom changed him. As he developed his studio practice, he discovered that art touches us spiritually in ways theology cannot often access. He learned that each person has an innate yearning for the sacred that simultaneously permeates and supersedes all religious and cultural traditions. He discovered that art allows him to have more open-ended and inclusive dialogues as he seeks to connect with others. Most importantly, in making art, Clark finally experienced for the first time the thing he felt his generation has been lacking - presentness. 

​

To make art, one must not only become aware of one’s body, but also allow the movement of the body to merge with the movements of the mind. What emerges is a soulful expression of our embodied consciousness. The imprints of hands in the Chauvet caves come to mind. The urge to document the body is an existential cry. These drawings tell us of the Cro-Mangon’s awareness of the mind, body, soul connection. The urge to mark this connection is a plea for community, to know if anyone else exists in the same way that we know that we exist. To draw is a demand to be seen as ‘I am’ — in the state of our ongoing becoming. 

​

This is not dissimilar to the urges to mark we see everyday. To hum a tune as we walk… For a child to draw their name repeatedly… For an unseen teen to tag a train car with spray paint. We instinctively pull ourselves back into our body when we are seeking to understand our place amongst the ‘myriad of things.’ As an artist, Clark draws as a spiritual practice, devoting himself to return daily to his body. The images become meditation chimes, momentarily pulling viewers back into their bodies. Furthermore, as a professor, he feels called to help others return to their bodies as well. He seeks to give his students the tools and agency to seek to understand their souls, and then to share that with others. This mission of mindfulness is a peaceful rebellion - the only solution, he believes, to overcome the psychological and social turmoil we experience today.