- The Fresno Bee
Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013 | 12:00 AM
Merced assemblage artist Karen LeCocq isn't a big fan of most of the major holidays.
Christmas? Big shrug.
But don't mess with her beloved Valentine's Day.
Two years into her relationship with David Medley, a contractor and artist who would become her future husband, she gave him a large, handmade wooden heart. He didn't give her anything.
He told her: "I didn't think Valentine's Day meant anything to you."
The new Gallery 25 exhibit "26 Years of Valentines" features work from Karen LeCocq and David Medley who have been exchanging hand crafted hearts every Valentine's Day for 26 years. LeCocq's artwork is made from whatever material she is using in her assemblage sculpture at the time. Medley's artwork could be made from anything and range in size from very small to having to be delivered by tractor.
The new Gallery 25 exhibit "26 Years of Valentines" features work from Karen LeCocq and David Medley who have been exchanging hand crafted hearts every Valentine's Day for 26 years. LeCocq's artwork is made from whatever material she is using in her assemblage sculpture at the time. Medley's artwork could be made from anything and range in size from very small to having to be delivered by tractor.
The new Gallery 25 exhibit "26 Years of Valentines" features work from Karen LeCocq and David Medley who have been exchanging hand crafted hearts every Valentine's Day for 26 years. LeCocq's artwork is made from whatever material she is using in her assemblage sculpture at the time. Medley's artwork could be made from anything and range in size from very small to having to be delivered by tractor.
The new Gallery 25 exhibit "26 Years of Valentines" features work from Karen LeCocq and David Medley who have been exchanging hand crafted hearts every Valentine's Day for 26 years. LeCocq's artwork is made from whatever material she is using in her assemblage sculpture at the time. Medley's artwork could be made from anything and range in size from very small to having to be delivered by tractor.
Uh-oh.
She replied, with what I'm sure many readers would agree was a degree of justifiable exasperation: "Well, I only did an entire show of hearts last year!"
That 1987 show featuring hearts made of wood held at the Merced Multicultural Arts Center should have been a billboard-sized clue to Medley that Valentine's Day was important in this relationship.
"Sometimes with Karen you have to pry things out," says Medley, taking a break Monday from setting up the couple's joint exhibition at Gallery 25. "Sometimes it takes 20 years."
He takes a look at his wife, who's sitting next to him at a work table watching him with a bemused expression.
"But with this," he continues, "I found out within a short time just by the look on her face."
One thing you can say about Medley: He sure knows how to take a hint.
The following year, he gave her a very special heart.
They both had art studios in the same building at the time, but they weren't connected. To visit each other, they had to go outside and walk around the building.
His valentine was a rough-cut heart made of sheet rock on one side and redwood paneling on the other.
She knew he had broken through the wall and would make them a door.
Every Valentine's Day since they've made elaborate heart-themed gifts for each other. Some years, they even made two. The result is the whimsical and artful exhibition titled "26 Years of Valentines."
All of the hearts made over the years are on display except two. One was a heart-shaped planter filled with flowers that didn't stand the test of time.
The other, a large wooden heart, was so big it required a tractor to deliver it.
One of the fun things about traipsing through the exhibition -- which is showing concurrently with a Gallery 25 members show titled "Hearts" -- is seeing how it often offers a historical record of the couple's lives.
Take LeCocq's "Whole House Heart." When Medley was building the couple's remote dream house east of Merced, LeCocq used the project's construction materials.
Among them: bits of foam insulation, sheet rock, aluminum thresholds, roof tiles, stucco and chicken wire.
"You could learn to build a house from this heart," she says.
For gallery goers out there concerned that the show might be a sticky-sweet experience akin to walking into a Hallmark store in February, don't fear.
After all, LeCocq's first "Valentines" dedicated to Medley, back in that first "Heart Art" show, consisted of hearts with nails driven through each center.
"I had just begun dating David and he kept breaking up with me every other day, or so it appeared to me," she writes in her gallery statement. "Every time he did, it felt better to drive another nail into a heart."
And everyone who knows that 26 years together inevitably comes with some rough patches will appreciate Medley's "Imperfect Heart," made out of a bent screen door. They'd been fighting right around Valentine's Day that year and had just made up.
"They don't always idealize romantic love," Medley says of the hearts in the show. "They're realistic statements about all the aspects of love."
The columnist can be reached at dmunro@fresnobee.com, (559) 441-6373 or @donaldbeearts on Twitter. Read his blog at fresnobeehive.com.
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