Valerie Roybal, Which We Desire, 2008: “I often work with layered surfaces: pieces from discarded books and magazines, antique postcards, handwritten letters and recipes, obsolete reference material, thrift store textiles, and mysterious random objects. Order, association, and reverence emerge from the collecting, sorting, and placement of each piece into a whole. I’m particularly fond of rescuing discarded and donated old books from my local library, which sells these books at a low cost to raise funds for more ‘modern’ books. I tend to work quickly and intuitively, working on several pieces at the same time. I don’t linger, but work composition out through trial and error. Hence, there are many, many layers, some of them hidden from view, in each piece.”