Valerie Hegarty builds imaginative sculptures and large-scale installations that present visions of destruction and regeneration. Her mixed-media sculptures combine unlikely objects—a faucet sprouting from an upside-down horse head that resembles equestrian monuments, or a tea kettle growing from the bow of a colonial ship—largely referencing early American art and antiques. Through juxtapositions and warping of recognizable images, she explores memory, place (and memory of place), history, and politics, and deconstructs themes such as Manifest Destiny, settler-colonialism, and environmental damage. The sculptures have a sense of being in flux as forms grow from one into another and melt or grow outwards from their containers. Her installations transform galleries and outside spaces with walls, floors, and sculptures that seem to burst at the seams, unravel, and reveal themselves behind deteriorating external layers. In her recent COVID Diaries Series, Hegarty applied her visual language to domestic spaces, visualizing health and political crises, yet suggesting regrowth and continuation.
Hegarty has had solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; the Brooklyn Museum, Malin Gallery, Marlborough Gallery, and the High Line, all NY; and the Cahoon Museum of American Art, Cotuit, MA, among others. Her group shows include ones at MoMA PS1, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Smack Mellon, Wave Hill, and The Hole, all NY; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; the Boca Raton Museum of Art, FL; the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA; the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts, Spring, TX; and the Torrance Art Museum, CA. Hegarty has had residencies at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program, Smack Mellon, MacDowell, and Yaddo, and she has received grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the New Britain Museum of American Art, Pérez Art Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, Portland Museum of Art, The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and the Saatchi Collection. She holds a BA from Middlebury College and a BA from the Academy of Art College. Hegarty earned her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.