Jeffrey Vallance (American b. 1955)

For over thirty years, Jeffrey Vallance has turned a critical and humorous eye toward his own wide-ranging experiences. Based on the artist’s memories and adventures, Vallance’s drawings, sculptures, installations and performance-based works make reference to his childhood in California, voyages to the Polynesian Islands and Iceland, residences in Las Vegas and the Arctic, sojourns to the Vatican, and to his celebrated Blinky the Friendly Hen project in 1978, when he held a funeral service for a frozen supermarket hen at Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park. The artist’s examination of these experiences combines a pseudo-anthropological approach with an art historically informed practice, and addresses themes of faith, myth, ritual and popular culture, along with the geopolitical landscapes of the past and present.

Born in 1955 in Redondo Beach, California, Vallance currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He received a BFA from California State University, Northridge in 1979 and an MFA from the former Otis Art Institute of the Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles in 1981. A 2004 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellow, the artist is currently a visiting assistant professor in New Genres at the University of California in Los Angeles.