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Anita Valencia, a quiet force in the San Antonio art scene for more than four decades, has lived for most of her 84 years in a nondescript white clapboard two-story house on Woodlawn Lake.
It’s where she continues to make her art, which she creates from recycled materials such as aluminum cans, CDs and old candy wrappers.
“I just feel good doing art,” she said. “It so much a part of me.”
With her work, which includes such public art works as “Perinolas,” a 2008 site-specific work in the Grand Hyatt Hotel lobby, Valencia makes subtle — and sometimes not so subtle — statements about the planet’s ecology.
“Anita has been a professional artist for decades, and throughout it all she’s had wonderfully creative ideas and somehow always has the energy to actualize them,” said San Antonio artist Kathy Vargas, associate professor of Art/Photography at the University of the Incarnate Word.
As a curator, Vargas recently chose one of Valencia’s latest works, “Se Fueron los Golondrinas,” (“Swallows Left” in Spanish) for an exhibition called “A Woman’s Place Is ...” The piece features small, blue birds cut from Coors beer cans. The show opens March 9 at Centro de Artes.
To read more about Valencia’s earth-friendly art and the San Antonio home where she makes it, please visit our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com.
sbennett@express-news.net
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