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Valérie Blass

Canadian artist (born 1967)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ16039696 ↗
Source-derived summary

Valérie Blass (born 1967) is a Canadian artist working primarily in sculpture. She lives and works in her hometown of Montreal, Quebec, and is represented by Catriona Jeffries, in Vancouver. She received both her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts, specializing in visual and media arts, from the Université du Québec à Montréal. She employs a variety of sculptural techniques, including casting, carving, moulding, and bricolage to create strange and playful arrangements of both found and constructed objects.

In a 2011 article in the Canadian magazine The Walrus, her practice of sculptural assemblage was compared to artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Louise Bourgeois. Her work has been collected by the National Gallery of Canada, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Royal Bank of Canada, and several other private collections.

Theory and practice

Collage

Blass relies on the process of collage in her works, focusing on materials that have a relationship either formally or conceptually to bring new meaning out of the objects through their correlation.

Doubling

Doubling in Blass' practice diverts the viewer's attention from the object as it is to the relationships it has with a similar object. Blass distorts the second sculpture using a myriad of approaches; One of the approaches that is used in Blass’s doubling is using the same texture for two sculptures and creating a figurative and abstract relationship. "The double turns up repeatedly in my work: the idea of two things with the same shape and the same motif and then a different shape with the same motif.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Valérie Blass” as canadian artist (born 1967). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Valérie, Blass and Canadian.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1967, 2011—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1967-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Valérie, Blass and Canadian providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Valérie Blass”, the useful work is to connect “canadian artist (born 1967)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16039696. VIAF identifies the subject as 191542455. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967 and 2011.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Valérie Blass”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Valérie Blass primary sources, Valérie Blass archive and Valérie research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Valérie Blass”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Valérie Blass” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.