Piece description from the artist
Title from a story by Cordwainer Smith.
This is the second in a set of abstracted ink drawings examining women’s experience of life in our society. The first, “Still Point in a Sea Change” focused on a young woman in transition, deciding which of the masks she’s been handed she’ll keep and which she’ll discard as she heads out to make her world.
The “Queen of the Afternoon” is a mature confident woman who has created her place in the world. She is girded with the armor of her self-made contexts, her position and accomplishments, and her social connections. But the armor that demonstrates her strength and underlines her confidence also encumbers her.
Our society reacts to mature female confidence; professional, personal, sexual, with an odd mixture or celebration, fear and derision. Many of us thus wear an odd set of “armor”.
As I completed this drawing I was thinking about the special set of extra responsibilities that women take on as they become established. We are not only bosses, but also mentors; not only responsible citizens, but also committee members, not only family members, but also caretakers, and the list goes on.
We are indeed the queens of all that we survey – as well as it’s carriers and caretakers.
Dr. Regina Valluzzi has an extensive scientific background in nanotechnology and biophysics. She has been a scientist in the chemical industry, a green chemistry researcher, a research professor at the engineering school at Tufts, a start-up founder engaged in technology commercialization, and a start-up and commercialization consultant.
Even during periods of intense activity as a scientist, Dr. Valluzzi has always held a strong interest in the visual arts and in visual information. While she majored in Materials Science at MIT, she also obtained a second degree in music and a minor in visual studies. Visual arts have managed to permeate her technical work; during her Ph.D in Polymer Science and Engineering at UMass Amherst, she completed a thesis that required advanced electron microscopy, image analysis, and theoretical data modeling. These experiences provided the visual insight and information that now influences much of her artwork.
Dr. Valluzzi’s work has been included in private collections across the US, UK, Germany, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Dubai and Malta, and in the corporate collection of "Seyfarth Shaw" Boston law offices around Boston. She has a selection of pieces on loan to the MIT Materials Science and Engineering Department as indoor public art. Her accomplishments include having published thirty articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, having made several scientific patents, having been a subject matter expert for an encyclopedia chapter, and having been invited to speak at science talks across the US, Europe, and Japan.
Her newsletter is a good source of ongoing information: http://eepurl.com/daiLQ
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