Jeffrey Vallance
Jeffrey Vallance, Blinky Carcass: Relic and Milagros (Performance Relic), 2007
Mixed media, 7 3/4 x 11 1/2 x 34 in. (19.7 x 29.2 x 1.9 cm)
On April 27, 1978, I went to the meat department of Ralphs supermarket and looked at chickens in plastic bags. I picked out a nice one and named it Blinky. Then I drove to the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery to bury Blinky. I ordered the complete funeral service – a lot, interment flower vase, blue plastic coffin with pink stain lining, viewing room and grave marker.
Ten years later, I arranged for the remains of Blinky to be exhumed and hired a lawyer, a doctor, and a scientist to determine the cause of Blinky’s death. Blinky’s bones were sifted through an archeological screen, her remains autopsied and her bones analyzed by a computer. Blinky’s bones were then reburied, except for the few bits that I saved as relics. The major first-class relicts of Blinky are preserved in the collection of Barry Sloane, Los Angeles.
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Jeffrey Vallance, Friendly Hen Reliquary, 2008
Mixed media, 9 x 5 x 3 in. (22.9 x 12.7 x 7.6 cm)
On April 27, 1978, I went to the meat department of Ralphs supermarket and looked at chickens in plastic bags. I picked out a nice one and named it Blinky. Then I drove to the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery to bury Blinky. I ordered the complete funeral service – a lot, interment flower vase, blue plastic coffin with pink stain lining, viewing room and grave marker.
Ten years later, I arranged for the remains of Blinky to be exhumed and hired a lawyer, a doctor, and a scientist to determine the cause of Blinky’s death. Blinky’s bones were sifted through an archeological screen, her remains autopsied and her bones analyzed by a computer. Blinky’s bones were then reburied, except for the few bits that I saved as relics. The major first-class relicts of Blinky are preserved in the collection of Barry Sloane, Los Angeles.
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Jeffrey Vallance, Leonid Brehnev Death Medallion, 2008
Mixed media, 19 3/4 x 19 1/4 x 9 1/2 in. (50.2 x 48.9 x 24.1 cm)
In the mid-1970s, I had a correspondence with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. I mailed him a cardboard cutout of himself in gold leaf mounted on red velvet. I asked him to autograph the portrait and send it back to me. (Later, when I got my FBI file via the Freedom of Information Act, there was a copy of my letter to Brezhnev inside.)
On the rainy morning of November 10, 1982, I went out to my damp studio and, for some inexplicable reason, made a medallion of Leonid Brezhnev in papier maché on wood. Later that day, in the evening, I heard on the news that Brezhnev had just died. By some kind of strange coincidence I was working on his portrait at the very moment he passed away. It was like I had a psychic connection to him at the moment of his passing. I mounted the Brezhnev medallion on red velvet, surrounded by Soviet medals.
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Jeffrey Vallance, Environmental Orange, 2008
Mixed media, 10 1/4 x 7 3/4 x 4 3/4 in. (26 x 19.7 x 12.1 cm)
In 1970, near my childhood home in Canoga Park, there was a wonderful place called Orcutt Ranch Park. At that time, the park consisted of an old ranch house surrounded by orange groves, which once covered such a large part of the San Fernando Valley. Along the southwest border of the ranch, there was an idyllic little stream shaded by ancient oak and eucalyptus trees. As a child I, would play at the stream, fascinated by the bugs and tadpoles. One day I found out that the Los Angeles County Flood Control District was planning to cut down all the trees and fill the stream with cement! I was so horrified that I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper, the Valley Green Sheet, and removed all the fluorescent-orange survey markers that the County put in place. Because of my efforts and letters, a “Save the Stream†group was formed that eventually lead to the preservation of the stream and the trees. This was my first environmental-activism success! Preserved in this reliquary is one of the desiccated found oranges that I collected at the time.
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Jeffrey Vallance, Idi Amin Dada #1, 2013
Mixed media on panel, 16 x 19 3/4 in. (40.6 x 50.2 cm)
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Jeffrey Vallance, Lötschentaler Roitschäggättä, 2013
Enamel on board with decals
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Jeffrey Vallance, Relic from the LBJ Ranch, 2006
Gravel, LBJ pin, reliquary, 10 x 4 1/4 x 4 in. (25.4 x 10.8 x 10.2 cm)
While living on Majestic Ranch in the Texas hill country in 2002, I visited another ranch in the vicinity: the LBJ Ranch. I had been to President Lyndon Johnson's ranch once before, in 1968, on a family vaction. In 2002, I made it a pilgrimage project to visit all the local LBJ historical sites - the LBJ Library, Johnson's birthplace, and the ranch. I collected a few stones from the gravel floor inside LBJ's cattle barn. I made two matching LBJ reliquaries; one has been donated to the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas and is now part of the library's collection.
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Jeffrey Vallance, Rock in the Shape of Texas, 2006
Rock in the shape of Texas, reliquary, 17 x 13 3/4 x 6 1/4 in. (43.2 x 34.9 x 15.9 cm)
In 2002, my wife and I lived for a time on a longhorn cattle ranch in Boerne, Texas, called the Majestic Ranch. We were both artists-in-residence at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Shortly after arriving at the ranch, I went for a trek through the scrubby juniper forest, where I came upon a rock simulacrum roughly in the shape of the state of Texas, which is quite distinctive, with its protruding panhandle. I thought, What are the chances of finding a rock shaped anything remotely resembling it? I constructed a reliquary recalling the shape of the nearby Alamo to house the Texas simulacrum.
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