Experiment and Explore

 Valentina  Valé is an educator and a visual artist with a MFA from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). After working as a designer for the jewelry industry and then becoming a certified Parent Educator, she merged both interests in her venture, Experiment and Explore, a concept to awaken the inner artist in adults and encourage visual art in the young.

Drawing has been institutionalized in schools for centuries, so that the study of art history has placed the highest value on representational drawing, using mark-making to appear realistic and thereby depersonalizing the individual process of exploration, a destruction of my antidote. I believe my process opens windows into remembrance, bringing objectivity to the sequence of time. Making images is an intimidating activity because in most people it triggers a sense of inadequacy.  We have learned that images should look like something, so we disconnect from the personal language of our own image-making, which we then stop valuing.  

Drawing from within is an investigation of the possibilities available, encompassing no wrong way of drawing, only alternatives. I am focusing on the importance of a common human need to free the self from societal boundaries by communicating through the practice of drawing--a simple but major tool for sensing, expressing and inventing--which can be empowering. The process of allowing chance to direct the space, through an automatic drawing approach, holds the veil of mystery as this exploration is brought about by using random marks or scribbles.  

Leonardo da Vinci was the first creative thinker who wrote about the importance of introducing random and chance events to produce variation in thinking patterns. He advised people to contemplate the walls, clouds, pavements, with the idea of looking for patterns and images to conceptually blend with their thoughts. 

 This drawing method is not the type of drawing one learns in an art class, it is an experimental approach to what one can do to create images that are connected to a personal perspective, an individual language, which one can pick up anytime and take as far as one chooses. No experience is necessary... this process uses random marks, scribbling, and how to transform them through your creativity.