Valerie Deas
In Loving Memory of Valerie Deas
Valerie Deas has taught quilt making at SoHarlem to formerly incarcerated women and has restored our collection of Gee's Bend quilts. The viewing of these quilts inaugurated Shop SoHarlem at the Malt House in 2022.
They inaugurate Shop SoHarlem at the Malt House. Images below of Valerie who replaced all the stars, backing and other precious handmade parts of these quilts.
Valerie Deas
Valerie Deas was born in the Bronx, raised in Harlem, and has resided in the Bronx for more than three decades. She has taught art professionally for over 25 years in public school classrooms and community workshops.
Valerie is a multimedia artist whose work often combines painting and textiles to explore dimensionality and color. Her work also draws from the rhythms and lines of music and dance traditions. She cites African art and Indigenous art of the Americas as inspirational, alongside the work of Picasso, El Greco, Wassily Kandinsky, Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and others.
Valerie has participated in more than 25 group shows. Her work has also appeared in two international shows, Book Art in Brazil and the International Textile Biennial: Beyond Category - Visions of Jazz in Fiber in San Jose, Costa Rica, curated by Carolyn Mazoolmi. Valerie’s solo exhibition, Thread and Paints, took place at Gallery M in Harlem, New York. Valerie's work has been on exhibition at Lincoln Center, Rush Gallery, Kente Royal Gallery, and Blue Door Art Gallery. Her quilts have been touring with the African American Fiber Art Exhibition throughout the country. In 2021, Valerie was awarded a City Artist Corps Grant to bring some of her artwork to her community. In 2022, Valerie was one of the Bronx Council on the Arts Community Engagement Grantees. he difference.
Valerie is the current Programming Board Chair of the Riverdale Art Association and a member of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQUA), Blue Door Art Center, Bx 200 Visual Artist Directory, and Harlem Girls Quilting Circle (HGQC).
The Gee’s Bend Quilts by African-American women were handmade in the 1980s and part of Josephine Richardson Collection. She acquired the quilts from Larry Hackley, Hackley Gallery, North Middletown/Winchester, Kentucky.