Valérie Chaussonnet

A French Native, I am an Austin-based sculptor, painter, and writer. I studied sculpture at the Corcoran Art School in Washington, DC, while working as a museum anthropologist and curator at the Smithsonian Institution, a specialist of Siberian and Arctic shamanism, clothing, and women’s art, topics that inform my art, together with our attachment to our landscape, to our ancestral, prehistoric and biological origins, and to one another as humans. I studied blacksmithing and welding at Austin Community College after moving to Texas to raise a family in 1997. Metal sculpture, watercolor and fiber art are my main mediums. My work is mostly joyful, colorful and sometimes whimsical.

I have participated in over sixty shows nationally since 2017, including a large solo show in Midland; Dimension Gallery, MASS Gallery, CoLab, the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum and the Neill-Cochran House and Museum in Austin; the former Austin Museum of Art; the Lawndale Art Center and the Art Car Museum in Houston; the Grand Rapids, Michigan Museum of Art; Artspace111 in Fort Worth; James Surls’ Studio, Terra Splendora; the Biblical Arts Museum in Dallas; the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts; and the Contemporary Art Museum in Plainview, Texas.