Sculptor Alan Valentine dies Tributes for gifted heart
THE city has lost talented artist Alan John Valentine, who was a regular contributor to the popular Strand Ephemera festivals.
He passed away in Townsville last week after a long illness, aged 68.
Creative director of Townsville City Council’s galleries, Jonathan Mcburnie, has written about his friend and the artist’s work in a tribute.
Mr Mcburnie said Alan’s inventiveness, gentle humour and charming manner would be missed greatly by the many people in the community he touched.
“I feel privileged to have been able to include Alan’s work in the exhibition, Utopia Tropicae: the Spirit of the North, only last year,” Mr Mcburnie said.
He said he would remember Alan’s wooden dogs, displayed in his front yard, which would be changed “every now and then to confuse the neighbours”.
Alan was born in Sydney and trained as a fitter machinist and nurse before leaving to live on Magnetic Island.
He relocated to Townsville, attending the then vibrant TAFE and JCU visual arts courses in the 1990s.
Mr Mcburnie said Alan “stole the show” in a recent exhibition of A Tropical State in Cairns and Toowoomba.
Artists were given a kitsch wooden pineapple souvenir to adapt.
“Alan put his ingenious mind for machines to work, turning the pineapple into a skate bowl for a dog on a skateboard to cruise around, propelled by a small lever from the side,” Mr Mcburnie said.
Mr Mcburnie said Alan was a regular contributor to Strand Ephemera.
“His inventive sculptures often adorned the beach in all of their intricate glory.
“It was always incredibly finely crafted, whether wood or metal, and often involved a mechanical function, a musical element, or both,” he said.
His Sea Gongs piece was a part of the first iteration of the festival in 2001.
A tribute will be held for Alan Valentine at Umbrella Studio on July 19 from 5-7pm.