Opening- Valerie Chaussonnet: DOZENS

September 19, 2026 - October 25, 2026 From Lydia Art Salon: "DOZENS originated from my curiosity about the persistence of the standard American measurement system and the resistance to the metric system. Slightly puzzled at first, as a European native, I have learned to function in standard in life and in my sculptural work in my adopted American homeland of the past forty years, and to appreciate it. DOZENS is a playful exploration of twelve as a practical quantity existing and thriving within our now universal base-ten counting system. Twelve is cool! Not just as inches in the archaic-sounding “feet”; eggs, roses, hours and months come in dozens in France and everywhere else too. And 12 is “conveniently” divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. There are therefore several elegant ways to display twelve items of a series on a wall or a table. DOZENS is also my playful take on its secondary meaning as “a lot”, as in a bazaar. I am showing here series created in the many mediums I enjoy working with, each assigned (by me) to a different story, mood and spirit, and corresponding to different facets of my life and interests. My mediums include steel, clay, fiber, oil, watercolor, pastel, and wood. All this with a sense of joyous extravagance, rather than reserve and sparsity. No Zen in DOZENS. DOZENS’s themes: Love and Nature. Flowers, landscapes, trees, bodies of water. Language, writing. French foods. Us, humans, as social beings and the fascinating bizarreness of our behaviors, our origins, evolutions and inventions. All themes that consistently inhabit my work since my beginnings as an artist."

Reception September 19\, 2026 \| 6:00 - 9:00 pm

Lydia Art Salon 1200 East 11th Street #109 Austin, Texas 78702