Los Angeles-based artist Jeffrey Vallance's work encompasses object-making, installation, performance, curating and writing. Examples include such projects as burying a frozen hen (Blinky the Friendly Hen, 1978) at a pet cemetery in California, traveling throughout Polynesia in search of the origin of the myth of Tiki, having an audience with the King of Tonga, creating a Richard Nixon Museum, installing an exhibit aboard a tugboat in the Västerbotten Maritime Museum in Umeå, Sweden, curating shows in the fabulous museums of Las Vegas, such as the Liberace Museum, Debbie Reynolds Casino, Cranberry Museum and the Clown Museum, and initiating a campaign for "Preserving America's Cultural Heritage," a federal bill that would establish a benefit fund for all living visual artists in the United States. Vallance discusses his body of work from the last twenty-five years as well as the works on display in Nine Lives.
In conjunction with the exhibition Nine Lives: Visionary Artists from L.A.