Finding Balance: Layers of a Lived Experiences

Artist/Instructor: Valeria Cray

Fee: Members $45, Not-yet members $60

Supplies included 

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Valeria Cray’s exhibition, Surface Tension, is a powerful reminder that art has the ability to uplift and speak directly to the soul. The concept of surface tension suggests objects in close proximity, the charged space between them, touching, resisting, and creating friction, both physically and metaphorically. Through her free-form sculptures, Valeria Cray explores the duality of human experience: connection and separation, tension and release, strength and vulnerability. In this hands-on workshop, participants will explore these same themes by bending and folding metal to create a quilted surface that holds and expresses tension. Guided by Valeria’s deeply spiritual and intuitive approach, participants will shape organic curves that connect and balance, mirroring the dynamic forces that shape our own human experience.

Valeria Cray

Valeria Cray is an artist, activist, entrepreneur, and educator. She was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, and holds a BFA from the University of Buffalo and an MFA from Pratt Institute in New York City. She studied and taught art with the Nahua, descendants of the Aztecs in Mexico, where she assisted with the construction of new schools. Her work as a sculptor incorporates such media as ceramics, metal, textiles, plexiglass, and wood. In 1995, Cray founded the community-based organization 50 Women with a Vision, and she has long been active in efforts to revitalize Buffalo's East Side. Examples of her public art projects include a painted tile mural for Buffalo's Apollo Theatre, exterior doors for the Merriweather Library (both located on Jefferson Avenue), and the Tree of Life on High and Ellicott streets in the Medical Corridor. 

For Further information, please contact Kathy Shiroki: shirokkg@buffalostate.edu