Valerie Hammond | Waking Dreams

November 13, 2025 – January 10, 2026

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 13, 2025, 6-8PM

Planthouse is pleased to present Waking Dreams, Valerie Hammond’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, and the inaugural show at our new location: 526 West 26th Street, Suite 416. Waking Dreams will be on view from November 13, 2025, through January 10, 2026, with an opening reception on Thursday, November 13, from 6–8 PM.

Waking Dreams takes its title from the hypnagogic state, the transitional phase between wakefulness and sleep, where consciousness drifts and the mind becomes a theater of vivid, often inexplicable images. In this liminal space, the boundaries between the real and the imagined blur, giving rise to what feels both deeply personal and unusual sensory experiences.

The work in Waking Dreams draws from these fleeting, in-between moments: the visual language of the subconscious as it flickers at the edge of awareness. Through expansive Sumi ink washes on Japanese paper, layered with printed imagery and watercolor, the series mirrors the unpredictable rhythm of this altered state. The process itself becomes a conversation between control and surrender,  the spontaneous flow of ink standing in for the uncontrolled currents of dream, while consciously added details respond to and shape what emerges.

The genesis of Waking Dreams is rooted in a lifelong fascination with the liminal. As a child sleepwalker, Valerie Hammond recalls “falling asleep, and then, to my amazement, awakening to find myself in a closet or on a balcony, disoriented and frightened, but then delighted as I found myself transported by a dream.” That sensation, she reflects, “became a source of wonder,” an early enchantment with dislocation and dreamlike experience that continues to shape and inform her practice.

In recent years, vivid waking dreams have resurfaced, arriving as a stream of images hovering on the edge of consciousness. These visions, both a respite from and a response to the turbulence of contemporary life, manifest as visual meditations on fragility, release, and the uneasy beauty of uncertainty.

Waking Dreams inhabits the threshold between sleep and waking, image and gesture, private reverie and shared unease. The works exist somewhere on the edge of collective consciousness, offering a space where imagination becomes both escape and mirror, solace and confrontation.

Valerie Hammond was born in Santa Maria, California; she lives and works in Coxsackie, New York and New York City. Her work can be found in both private and public collections such as the Walker Art Center, the Library of Congress, The Fine Arts Museum Houston, The Progressive Art Collection, the Fidelity Collection, the New York Public Library’s print and drawing collection, The Chazen Museum, The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, The Grand Palais Museum, Paris and the Getty Museum. She is a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, and has exhibited in solo and group shows nationally and internationally.