Bare Bones: The Feminist’s Obituary
She spent her youth in Pasadena. She worked several jobs, including gun-wearing cop in Yosemite National Park. She lived her whole life in the West, emphasis on the Great Basin: Yosemite, Mono Lake, Utah, June Lake.
In the 1980s, she began painting under the mentorship of Milford Zones and Katherine Chang Liu (names worth mentioning). She illustrated twelve books, including one her husband wrote (name worth mentioning; it was an assignment).
The book she wrote and edited herself was about her mother, well-known mountain-climber Ruth Dyar Mendenhall (name worth mentioning). It was a collection of her mother’s mountaineering letters, so we might say they were written by her mother and curated to tell a story by Valerie.[1] Her husband also wrote a memoir, (title not worth mentioning here), that includes an ink drawing she made of Mt. Conness. Also chapter openers and frontispieces, which is to say, illustrative ornamentation.[2] As to the book itself, a memoir of the half century spent taking walks in the Park with Valerie, he had this to say: “Though Valerie, my partner of more than fifty years, [was] a party to these excursions, these memories are mine alone.”[3]
Her rumination and exploration in color and ink of the trees and rocks left her with things to say about her work.
“My paintings of the Great Basin[4] explore emptiness, or, as the poet Wallace Stevens calls it, ‘Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.’[5]
In the end, there are Valerie P. Cohen’s paintings, begging attention, refusing attention, of trees in dormancy faking death while holding new life all the time. In her memory, visit her website: valeriepcohen.com. Plant a tree, although the ones offered by this obituary website may be a scam.
NOTES:
[1] It is a sentence that raises questions about the relationship between writer and editor, and questions about mother and daughter, too.
[2] It is a sentence that raises questions about compensation and credit.
[3] It is a sentence that raises questions about credit. Also, about the relationship between “partner” and “a party to.” In the most generous sense, we can say he did not want to put words in her mouth. Ungenerously, we can say she tagged along for insights, observations, and memories he makes sure everyone knows are his own. She was neither collaborator nor contributor, outside of walking and checking the topographical map along the way. For her insights, look to the paintings, but not the ones in his books, which were ornamentation, commissioned.
[4] The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets to the ocean, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California.
[5] Stevens, Wallace. “The Snow Man,” Poetry Magazine: 1921. Available June 17, 2024 : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45235/the-snow-man-56d224a6d4e90.
