Monica Valentine: Feeling in Color by Frances Fleetwood

Artist Monica Valentine loves to dress monochromatically. So when she greets me at a vibrant communal studio in downtown Oakland, California, I’m not surprised to find her almost entirely in green, including her pants, shirt, earrings, headband, a bracelet on each wrist, a necklace of plastic letters that repeatedly spell out PRIDE, and a mini green flashlight on a green cord around her neck. The few exceptions are a light blue face mask, a red fanny pack covered in bike reflectors, a red-and-white collapsible cane, and her blue prosthetic eyes.


An elderly woman holding a cane is dressed all in red. She is shown from the waist up and positioned at a 3/4 angle, revealing one full profile side while partially showing the other. She wears a woven textile dress, a mask with diamantes on it, a necklace of ribbon with a bike reflector, a necklace of pipe cleaners with two CDs, pom pom earrings, a beaded bracelet, and a textural hat made from yarn, beads, and plastic shapes. She has white skin and short grey hair.



We walk with her hand on my elbow through the back of the studio and upstairs to a smaller room, where others quietly work on various art projects. We sit down at a desk on which are three containers filled with green beads, green sequins, and silver pins, respectively; a Styrofoam mannequin head adorned with the beginnings of a green mohawk; and a tub packed with countless additional monochromatic containers filled with pink, yellow, red, blue, and purple beads or sequins. She continues her work of ornamenting the Styrofoam head as we chat about her art and a wide variety of her favorite topics—such as what I had for dinner last night and why you can’t take balloons into surgery.
 A cube-shaped sculpture sits against a white background. The sculpture is covered with beads and sequins that are red, blue, green, and yellow. The colors are dispersed unevenly across the cube.



Valentine is an artist at Creative Growth, a nonprofit art center that since 1974 has provided studio and gallery space to hundreds of artists with developmental and concurrent disabilities—supplemented by artistic guidance and exhibition opportunities. The building is a converted auto repair shop with high ceilings, skylights, and large windows. The studio is filled floor to ceiling with all manner of art objects: wooden sculptures, textiles, paintings, and handmade rugs—plus racks of handmade and upcycled clothing, shelves full of ceramics, and cupboards filled with art supplies. (Note, I worked at Creative Growth from 2017 to 2022.)

Valentine’s primary art forms are colorful Styrofoam sculptures—cubes and cuboids, spheres, mannequin heads, even cylindrical shapes resembling cakes or pizzas—adorned with beads and sequins. Valentine is blind, and threads colored sequins and beads onto thin pins using her hands to feel along the foam to find their placement. She often describes things, and people, as “feelable” or “scratchable”—a compliment of the highest order.

Born prematurely in 1955 in San Mateo, California, Valentine is the fourth of eight children. And though she’s been without sight her whole life, she loves color—she can feel the color of an object synesthetically from its temperature. The use of color is extremely important to both her art practice and her personal identity. According to her sister Catherine Valentine, from a young age Valentine always had an innate connection to color and light. She shares:
Monica seemed, from the time that she was a kid, very very aware of color. She was always asking about color and light and was very sensitive to the visual world, which to me was really fascinating because she had no obvious access to [it].... I used to experiment with her when we were kids and I would get either clothes or material of different colors, and I would have her feel it, and I would say, ‘Monica what color is this,’ and her accuracy rate was way beyond chance. It seemed to me at that very young age that she had this other kind of connection to the visual plane.[1]

Valentine didn’t begin making art full-time until a hip injury prevented her from participating in her work program. Upon joining Creative Growth in 2012, she experimented with various media before finding her way to the sculptures she’s now known for. According to Matt Dostal, formerly Creative Growth’s studio director, she experimented a good deal when she started. She did some cool pen-and-ink work [and] abstract circular gestural drawings.... She did some amazing two-dimensional wood sculptures ... layer[ing] paints and sand[ing] high spots to expose the color. She also tried felting, and traditional beading/jewelry, but I think her pin, bead, and sequined sculptures were the most tactically satisfying. They allowed her the most independence in terms of process ... and played into her whimsical, supernatural relationship with colors.[2]

Valentine now has a successful art practice; her adorned sculptures are in high demand, often selling before they’re finished. They are striking sculptures that convey the importance of touch—inherently tactile even from a distance. The countless hours spent making each work are represented by countless colored beads, sequins, and pins—all arranged to shine and sparkle, conveying the importance of color and light.

When asked about the inspirations for these unique objects, Valentine shares that she has a vision for each sculpture in her mind. She tells me the green Styrofoam head will eventually become a full mannequin, with “blue eyes, a red nose, a white mouth, yellow ears, and red legs, red arms, red feet, a red stomach.” Green makes her think of nature. Red makes her feel fiery—but energetic, not angry. Blue reminds her of the ocean—blue is cold. Green is freezing. Red is hot. Yellow is warm like the sun, as are pink and purple. Orange is in between warm and hot. When I ask if she can feel the color as she threads the beads she replies nonchalantly, “Of course, why are you asking me that, deary?”[3] She also tells me, “I like to put beads and sequins into the foam because it feels good.”
A cube-shaped sculpture sits against a white background. The sculpture is covered with beads and sequins that are red, blue, yellow, and orange. The colors are dispersed unevenly across the cube.



After perfecting the craft of these sought-after sculptures, Valentine expanded her art practice in 2019 when she was introduced to weaving. Using a SAORI loom—a Japanese floor loom designed to be accessible—Valentine weaves in a freeform style inspired by the SAORI philosophy, where experimenting is encouraged, mistakes are impossible, and any sign of the human behind the weaving is celebrated.[4] 

Creative Growth’s fiber arts instructor Anne Meade Paden describes Valentine’s practice:
Monica weaves by touch and tension. She runs her hand across the top of the weaving to see how much she has woven, and pulls the shuttle out to her side until she can feel tension to know when she has completed weaving a row. This extension wraps around a beam on one side of the loom, creating a signature fringe along one side of her weavings. Monica prefers to weave monochromatically, weaving in different shades of one color until there is no more room on the loom to wind the weaving. Red is her go-to color, so much that we are always running low on red yarn in the weaving area. There is a whole-body rhythm to her weaving where it looks almost like she is dancing as she weaves. She celebrates the completion of each bobbin. [5]

These textile works form wall hangings or wearable pieces such as shawls or dresses. Valentine also makes, wears, and gifts necklaces and headpieces made of bike reflectors—objects that are significant because of their connection to light, reflection, and vision. She asks how many reflectors my bike has—two—and tells me I should get more, before describing the bike reflector sculptural mobiles she has in her home.

As I leave Creative Growth after spending time with Valentine, I reflect on her art practice led by her sense of touch and her connection to color. Her blindness is deeply connected to her unique aesthetic and artistic techniques, as she subverts beading and weaving methods to make them her own, extending the boundaries of her body onto the sculptures she ornaments with beads and sequins. From her bike reflector necklaces and headpieces, and her wearable textiles, to her personal effects, she armors and adorns herself—and everything in her path—in color and light.



Endnotes
[1]. Catherine Valentine in Monica’s Journey to Creative Growth, video (4:59) created by Elena Mateus at University of California, Berkeley, as part of Campus MovieFest, uploaded October 20, 2018, 
[2]. Matt Dostal, personal communications with author, November 2024.
[3]. Monica Valentine, personal communications with author, September 2024.
[4]. “About SAORI,” SAORI Global, n.d., accessed December 1, 2024, https://www.saoriglobal.com/about-saori
[5]. Anne Meade Paden, personal communications with author, September 2024.

About the author

Frances Fleetwood (they/them) is a queer nonbinary arts writer, curator, and administrator. They have held positions at Art Jewelry Forum, Creative Growth, Root Division, and Arts Project Australia. They prioritize writing and curating art that centers liberation, uplifting artists from historically excluded and marginalized communities.