10 Questions with Valerie Sullivan Fuchs

Valerie Sullivan Fuchs is a conceptually based artist who works with new media, sound, video and installation to encounter the relationship between nature, industrialization and each other. She was raised on a sustainable farm, where she and her family raised most of their food and heated their home with firewood in rural Kentucky. She still lives in rural Kentucky with her two children and husband.

Fuchs took a few minutes to answer 10 questions for us leading up to her solo exhibition, Entanglement, at WheelHouse Art. 

Outside of art, what hobbies do you have or how do you like to spend your free time? 

I write and read mostly.

What is your proudest accomplishment? 

As an artist there have been several proud and grateful moments, but with the Cleveland Clinic Commission I finally felt my work could transcend being art and possibly aid in the healing process.

[Above: Fuchs installation at the Cleveland Clinic]

Do you collect anything? 

As a child I collected Nancy Drew books. For a long time, I collected anything that wasn't a television, but looked like one-salt & pepper shakers, a cookie jar, a jewelry box. And my mother, who collected antiques, would always buy me those when she saw them.  I hike around looking for  Native American tools on the farm, and find scrapers, diggers, mostly.  In addition, I collect art from my friends locally and from all over the world. 

Do you believe in ghosts? 

Not sure but have had a few experiences.  I grew up in an over one-hundred-year-old house and every year the family that built it had a reunion in a nearby park and would come over to tour it. They would tell us who died where, and about a large loom that filled the dining room. One day, I went upstairs to my bedroom, shut the door, and said 'ok you ghosts come out' And the light bulb blew out...so maybe.

What would be the title of your memoir?

Sisyphus

If you could design your own holiday, what would people celebrate?

Beautiful days, when its in the 60's or 70's those should be frequent mini holidays and should be days off of work -light warm lightly raining days, snowy sunshining days, cool fall days. 

Do you think your dreams influence your creativity? 

I frequently wake up with ideas and answers.

If you could erase one trend (past or present) from existence, what would it be? 

Dehumanizing people.

Do you believe in fate, or pure coincidence? 

Neither. I think when you work toward what you love with every vibrating fiber in your being, you can bend back fate and shape it yourself, and then in return, you open up to attracting beautiful synchronous energy. That's the beauty of being creatively alive.

Have you ever disliked something and then changed your mind? 

During film history class, we were watching Last Year at Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais and I just wanted to leave. But then, in the middle of its repetitiveness and flashback structure I really began to love it.