Text of Val about her work in her studio in 2010

I feel an irrepressible hankering to create which only grows in stature and is getting stronger over the years and makes me run to my studio from sunrise. I stop at nightfall, overworked by the concentration of my day; the work accomplished in the heat of the climate of Bangkok.

I spent my day with a multitude of characters with whom I play like puppets.
I change the position of a leg, creating a swaying, I imagine a look in a new direction, I look for complicity between the characters, I make them have a dialog or live next to each other with indifference.
I have been diving around in the sensual pleasures of form, the finding of a line, the distortion or twist of the plan to allow the light to perform. I let the chance of the shape apprehend me and give me new directions while my fingers are playing, moving forward, guided by instinct in an unknown direction.

I took the time to look, to observe the details, to take a step back, to fit new ways of looking to assess, evaluate, modify, discard, confirm.

Poetry guides my thinking, my ongoing research, I forge shape like rimes, I’m looking for a gentle curve to evoke a kind of inner equilibrium: the balance of a skiff on the water, the poetry of a book that flies away, of a hand that free itself from an architecture, the poetry of a shadow reflected on a wall like moving and silent silhouettes.

Let me evoke snapshots, moments identified by those who know, those who are seeking and taking the time to watch the boldness of a way to walk, the sweetness of a head tilt.

I’m considering the smallness of man. The importance of each fate that weights a feather in the history of humanity and invades me periodically, like a refrain that calms my ardor.

The architecture that underlies my work has several roles.
It provides a structure to my characters that allows them to settle and this adds to the evocation of the moment. My bronze character is a particular and identified location; this rigid framework will bring him alive, like in a selected moment in his evolution, as opposed with the timelessness of the structure.
This architecture also allows me to add a new dimension to my creation.  A sculpture means raw material, shapes, plans, lines. The structure, life a frame for my characters, will add the dimension of the void as opposed to the full.
My architectures, in parallel to that play of space and light, will locate my characters in space, underlie a relationship between man and the world around him. I’ll play on different scales, new understanding data for my sculptures. Man may feel overwhelmed by the immensity that surrounds him or feel serene and in harmony with the world. Man may be excessively big in the image of his pride and the importance he feels invested with, or the big image of his work, which is huge compared to the time and resources outsourced to him.

The architecture, theater decor of my characters, will have two sources of main inspiration in the image of the world that surrounds us.
An urban inspiration, a multitude of characters evolving in a frameworks inspired by urban architecture. The town is in constant motion, the city has a rhythm of its own, a breathing of her own. My characters in these urban decors are implicit in action, they are steeped in the rhythm of the city. These urban architectures evoke the urban crowd, the absurdity of fate caught up in this crowd, the pride of those lives that feel unique to the image of excess and grandeur of the architectural buildings but also the intimacy of a fleeting and secret moment perceived through a window or a half-open door.

An inspiration from nature through the observation of the immense and the details and the taking over of the aquatic and plant forms, a rendering of the underlying balance around us, the beauty caught from the nature, the line of a leaf, the transparency of a drop, all shapes, lines and colors that surround us. This rhythm of that we missed who reminds us in these unusual moments where we know to be attentive. The tie of my characters with these structures will become softer and more harmonious as a balance which find itself when we take the time to listen to the world.