Val Britton, born in Livingston, New Jersey, lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She received her B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design and her M.F.A. from California College of the Arts. Britton creates immersive, collaged works on paper and site-specific installations that explore physical and psychological spaces. Her fragmented, exploded landscapes draw on the language of maps to investigate memory, history, and the possibilities of abstraction.
A recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and the Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship, she has participated in residencies and fellowships including Headlands Center for the Arts, Recology, Millay Colony for the Arts, Kala Art Institute, the Facebook Artist in Residence Program, the Golden Foundation, and Ucross. She has exhibited in museums, galleries, art fairs, alternative spaces, and non- profit institutions including the San Jose Museum of Art, Gallery Wendi Norris, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. Group shows include the San Jose Museum of Art, the Katonah Museum of Art, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, and the de Saisset Museum.
Britton was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission to create a permanent public artwork for the San Francisco International Airport that opened to the public in 2015. This 15-panel work, measuring 9 feet high by 55 feet wide, was executed in laminated glass using a variety of techniques including hand painting, graphite drawing, and sandblasting areas to create an etched effect.
Britton’s work is part of numerous collections, including Arkansas Arts Center, The Cleveland Clinic Fine Art Collection, Cleveland, OH; de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, CA; Facebook Headquarters, Menlo Park, CA; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York, NY; New-York Historical Society, New York, NY; New York Public Library, New York, NY; and the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA. Jens Hoffmann and Trevor Paglen provide critical text in her catalog Reverberations and articles about her work are featured in Square Cylinder, the San Francisco Chronicle, Refinery 29, KQED Arts, Artillery Magazine, Venison Magazine, Art Practical, and 7×7 Magazine.