Painter Vincent Valdez Returns to RISD for Lecture and HotNights Collaboration

Figurative painter and RISD alum Vincent Valdez 00 IL began his creative journey at the age of nine, painting community-oriented murals in his hometown of San Antonio, TX alongside mentor Alex Rubio. When he arrived at RISD in 1996, he was applying house paint purchased by the gallon from the local hardware store to sheets of plywood until Professor Fritz Drury convinced him to try oil on canvas. “I carry the lessons I learned at RISD with me to this day and am haunted by the voices of Fritz and other influential professors like Lenny Long and Tom Sgouros,” Valdez says.

The award-winning Mexican-American artist—known for creating monumental-scale works reflecting on American identity and the struggle for justice—spoke at RISD in early May and collaborated with current students and faculty in the Glass department’s hot shop as part of the long-running HotNights series. Every semester, the department welcomes non-glass artists into the hot shop to experiment with the versatile material and discover new ways to use it.

“We started HotNights in 2010 with the goal of teaching the surrounding community about what we do and creating opportunities for visiting lecturers, faculty from other departments, historians and scientists to work alongside our students in the hot shop,” Professor Rachel Berwick 84 GL explains.  

“This was Vincent’s first experience working with glass, and he was interested in the transparency and fluidity of the material and how to incorporate that directly into his studio practice,” faculty member Karin Forslund adds. Valdez plays the trumpet and used it in the hot shop in surprising and experimental ways: creating prototypes for glass mutes and blowing through it to make glass and sound at the same time.

Also present was curator and longtime RISD supporter Denise Markonish, who is preparing to mount an expansive mid-career retrospective of Valdez’ work at MASS MoCA on May 24. Titled Just a Dream, the exhibition will feature early drawings, portraits, sculpture, video, lithography and even some of the Polaroids Valdez used to compose paintings when he was a student. A bilingual book, edited by Markonish and featuring texts by Evan Garza, Joyce Carol Oates and others, is also in the works.

Valdez explained during his talk that he works in several mediums but sees drawing as the foundation of his painting practice. He chose to major in Illustration at RISD because figurative painting was completely outside the norm at the time. 

“The Illustration department taught me how to hustle and meet deadlines,” he told students. “I continue to illustrate books and concert posters and sustain my painting practice by selling small pieces that also bring my voice into the commercial world. You have to be flexible and able to create your own lifeline.”

In terms of process, Valdez works big and fast, moving from project to project in his Los Angeles studio and clearing his head by playing trumpet. His work, he explained, “probes the past to make sense of the present.” Pieces like Kill the Pachuco Bastard! (which he painted as a senior at RISD) reflect on race riots and other ugly elements of US history that are seldom taught in school. 

“I bring the outside world into the studio and make work that is educational and informative,” he said. “These struggles, these discarded, forgotten, erased moments in time, are nothing new. We are plagued as a society by the fog of social amnesia. My goal as an artist is to help the viewer feel something deeply and see the world in a slightly different way.”

Valdez closed his talk by encouraging students to invent their own rules and reminding them to keep their eyes open. “Once you learn to see,” he said, “you can never learn to unsee.”

Simone Solondz
May 19, 2025