University Museums show Greenville native's work

Kristen Daniel
dm contributing writer

Valerie Jaudon has traveled to Memphis, Mexico City and London along the way to becomming an artist.

Jaudon is an artist originally from Greenville who didn't stick to one place while going to school. She has attended the Mississippi University for Women, the Memphis Academy of Art, the University of the Americas in Mexico City and St. Martin's School of Art in London. She is presently represented by Sidney Janis Gallery in New York where she lives and works.

Now her art work is on display close by--in the University Museums. This exhibit shows the stages of Jaudon's work by presenting 47 drawings in chonological order. Beginning with a sketch of super imposed grids in 1973, she shows how her work has progressed through the years. These sketches reveal different geometric pattern movements which show how Jaudon arrived at her final product.

The diverse drawings that Jaudon presents trace the evolution through her processes rather than her finished works. René Paul Barilleaux, the museum's chief curator and a personal friend of Jaudon, states that this is a process of, "trial and error, repetition and rejection, it is a discovery that images reveal the direction in which to propel her art."

All of this trial and error has guided her in her exploration of abstraction. "Originally linked to the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s," said Barilleaux, "Jaudon's imagery evolved from early highly structured, repetitive abstractions into lush, layered, atmospheric compositions of the recent past." Her images have clearly changed from the interlaced bands in the 1980s to floating figures in the late 1990s.

Barilleaux said that "there are no longer explicit references to the grid system" in her newest works, which are comprised of ornamental figures that float in the foreground. This can be seen in the later works where the traces of the grid began to fade.

Though Jaudon's paintings are blatantly abstract, she states, "I could never bring myself to think of abstraction as a war waged against realism. I've always thought about my painting in a much more positive and productive way."

Indeed many artistic viewers would agree with her, in a short essay about her work, Paul Mattick suggests that her art is about everything from, "sensory pleasures to the structures of social inequality." Mattick also writes about her relation to another artistic movement.

"Jaudon is an heir to cubism," writes Mattick, "using paint systematically to construct a picture."

Jaudon's taste is reflected in her art. She said she has always been more "attracted to artists who were more 'device oriented,' more systematic, more logical..." She is drawn to paintings that are logical with a mixture of flexibility and ambiguity.

"For me, an abstract painting is clearly a work of representation, but of a very complex sort." Jaudon said, " It has more to do with how we see than what we see."

Jaudon's artistic gifts are not only present in her drawings and paintings, but also in her architectural projects. Barilleaux said, "she found the same language of form and structure in abstract painting and modern architecture." Some of her projects include subway stations for the New York mass transit system, a ceiling mural in the Philadelphia INA building, the Blue Pools Courtyard at the Birmingham Museum of Art, and a wall mural for the Atlanta City Hall.

Unlike most artists from Mississippi, Jaudon's style is more modernistic and systematic. Her talent goes beyond the elementary geometric figures into a realm of its own personality with a connection to the world of modest means and highest ambitions. Local folks should have a special appreciation for some of the titles like Bay St. Louis, Mendenhall and Okalona.

For those interested in finding more about the show, René Paul Barilleaux will give a gallery presentation, open to the public, on Sunday, Feb. 6, from 2- 4 p.m.