Today we’d like to introduce you to Devi Vallabhaneni.
Hi Devi, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My childhood was full of color, games, and math.
Color came in the form of coloring books, crayons, and paint sets. I remember wanting to create my own colors because there weren’t enough crayons for my liking. Board games were fun with other kids as well as by myself. Many board games are for multiple players, so I used to play all players, which helped me recognize patterns in how the game needs to be played to win.
My dad started out as an engineer, so math was very important to him. He’d create problem sets as homework outside of what was taught in school. I also had to recite multiplication tables every day before dinner. It felt like a chore then, but I’m so grateful for the discipline. As you can see, colors, games, and math were my constant companions growing up as an only child in Chicago.
I never thought of myself as a creative person because I thought you were born creative. I didn’t think I was, so I followed a traditional path for the first part of my life: studying accounting and finance and then ultimately earning an MBA from Harvard Business School. Then one day in 2012, I decided to make the pursuit of beauty the central theme of my life, which led me to attend fashion school and earn Certificates in Textiles, Embroidery, Fashion Design, and Pattern Making. I’ve always seen fashion as the most daily choice we have to express ourselves as well as the most personal form of beauty, so I thought it would be the perfect starting point for understanding beauty as well as myself. Fashion school taught me a lot, but the most important was that creativity is a state of mind as well as a skillset.
Looking back, attending fashion school was among the best decisions I’ve made. Because I didn’t know where it would take me, I had no choice but to focus on one day at a time and to be 100 percent committed to learning as much as I could. I was basically a sponge, absorbing everything about the process of creating fashion. Doing so put me on a path of unknowingly developing a new genre of art: Abstract Couture®. Abstract Couture transforms the ethos of Haute Couture – the precision, discipline, and history – into contemporary art.
In the last eight years, my work has been featured in three galleries in Paris, and I’ve had shows in London, Paris, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Columbus, OH. My work is in prominent private collections in Qatar, London, Washington DC, and Southern California.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I’ve felt that my creative path has been directly proportional to how I feel about being an artist. I’m thankful that my creative life has unfolded in a steady and sustainable pace so that my self-identity can catch up to reality. In other words, my identity as an artist was the bottleneck to creativity. I didn’t grow up thinking being an artist was even possible. My creative practice started in 2015, and for the first six years, it’s been fighting the thought: am I really an artist.
It took living in Paris in 2021 to change my self-perception. Paris is an aesthetic meritocracy, so being accepted there as an artist felt gigantic. I’d cry out of joy most mornings because I got to live my life in such an unexpected yet meaningful way. I remember meeting with a chic young couple for a custom commission. We were brainstorming ideas for their living room when the husband asked: What does the artist think? Everyone was looking at me, and it took me a minute to realize the artist he was referring to was actually me. I think about that moment in time as the turning point in how I view myself.
Because it’s such a new genre, the biggest challenge now is to know what’s possible for me as well as for my practice. I hear so many times when I present my work, “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” I’d love to extend my practice into digital and public art installations.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My art blends the discipline of math, the modern gestures of embroidery, and the historical ethos of Haute Couture to create visual expressions to be appreciated as contemporary art. Visual signatures of Abstract Couture include 3D, volume, depth, layers, texture, color, and linearity. A friend of mine uses the term – Simplexity to describe my art: simple to the eye and complex in construction.
I’m most proud of winning First Place in a global embroidery competition sponsored by London’s Hand & Lock, which is a historical embroidery house that creates embroidery for the British Military, British Royal Family, and fashion houses like Burberry and Louis Vuitton. I was still a fashion student when I won. I worked on my collection for eight months straight and was consumed by every aspect of it. Flying home to Chicago from London, I remember thinking, “My life is going to change. I don’t know how, but it will.” I can honestly say that seven years later, my life has definitely changed…for the better…since then.
It’s hard to answer what sets me apart because most serious artists are probably consumed by their creative practice – just like I am. I view my art practice as a gift I’ve received in life. I feel that Abstract Couture chose me as the steward. Maybe this is what sets me apart.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.deviatelier.com
- Instagram: @devi.atelier
