Artistry and Advocacy: UMD alum finds purpose in rural America

For UMD grad Nancy X. Valentine, discovering her art and empowering her community earned a spot at the White House.

Nancy X. Valentine is a 2013 UMD grad who now serves as Executive Director for Kaddatz Galleries in Fergus Falls, MN, where she creates her own art, while also serving as a champion for the arts in rural communities. It’s work that recently earned her national recognition and a trip to serve as a panelist at the White House as a Rural Innovator.

Valentine grew up in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, with her family, who had immigrated from China to avoid the single-child law and an impending end to the pregnancy that would eventually bring Nancy into the world. They moved to the United States to give her a life.

Valentine first saw UMD when she was in eighth grade on a tour with her college-bound brother. She remembered the skylights of Solon Campus Center, an array of colorful banners, the Bulldog Resource Center, support for financial aid, and flags from other countries. Above all, she remembered “ being in awe of an environment that supported all of those things,” Valentine said.

From that moment, she knew she would be attending UMD.

“I am the daughter of an immigrant family, so that means there's a lot of pressure to succeed, to have a stable job with a pension and all,” Valentine said. She chose the route of medicine, but on campus, she quickly learned that pre-med was not for her. She struggled academically and wondered about the future. But as that door closed, another one opened through her first Communication class, taught by John Hansen and focused on interpersonal communication. “ That was the one class that I thrived in and looked forward to,” Valentine said. By the end of the semester, she switched her major and didn’t look back.

A woman in white sits in front of panels of artwork on display.
Image: Nancy X. Valentine in front of her series: Audacity to be Asian in Rural America: we owe you no apologies.

One of her favorite classes at UMD was  Intercultural Communication, taught by Ryan Goei and Michael Sunnafrank. “The whole premise of the class was to break down barriers to build understanding through the art of play, through the art of connection,” Valentine said.

That class taught her the importance of engaging in tough conversations, and especially how play can serve as a connection. She and her classmates would work through challenging conversations. “After that, we would diffuse any of the tension in the air by going and having fun together,” she said,  by playing darts or pool, or by going camping or skating at a roller rink.

Those tenets became “a huge foundation for my work today. One of my values is fun and play.”

After graduation, Valentine explored a number of different roles in various fields. Eventually, she discovered an organization called Springboard for the Arts, and that the Twin Cities-based national organization had an office  for their rural-based work in Fergus Falls. “ That was my first step into the communication realm of marketing and PR,” she said. “Ever since I stepped into the nonprofit world, I kind of never stepped out.”

One of the biggest watershed moments for Valentine was when she came home one day in Fergus Falls to find her apartment vandalized, the perpetrator still inside. Valentine was unharmed, but no longer felt safe in the space. She began looking for a new place to live, somewhere with community.

She found that in the Kaddatz Galleries.

Originally opened in 2009 from an abandoned historic hotel, the space has been reinvented to host both artists’ loft apartments and art shows, as well as provide education, outreach, classes and events. She approached the building manager with the spark of inspiration that this might be the right fit for her. Despite being creative and artistic, Valentine didn’t consider herself an artist and didn’t have a body of work or an ongoing project. “ I didn't feel like I was a viable candidate for living there because the idea of labeling yourself as an artist, especially when you're in the very emerging stages is just coated with imposter syndrome,” she said.

Still, the building manager gave Valentine a shot. “She took a gamble, and that's where it really started for me,” Valentine said. It was the first place she had both a studio and a sanctuary of space.

“It's where my artistry began,” she said.  

A woman in black stands at a podium in front of an art show on display.
Image: Nancy X. Valentine in front of her series: Audacity to be Asian in Rural America: we owe you no apologies at the MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids, MN. Early in her career, UMD organizations collaborated to bring Valentine to Duluth to talk about her work on Asian-American identity in rural Minnesota.

“ I started to claim the title of being a visual artist in 2016,” she says. “But I would say I really stepped into my artistry in 2019, and kind of use that as my umbrella term for career, because it's the approach I take to any job.”

“ I started with watercolor because that was what was economically viable for me at the time,” she said, teaching herself in her new studio. “ It started to bring me back to times when I was young and watching my grandfather write out poetry in Chinese ink or Sumi ink.” She remembered quiet afternoons at her grandmother’s apartment with her grandfather by a window looking over the water, brush in hand as he painted traditional Chinese calligraphy in black and white.

She realized that the work she’d been creating felt tied to her family’s culture. “ There were some things that I was just originally doing organically that I later learned were part of Chinese painting,” she said. From subject and style, to elements of foreground and sky, she began to find traits shared between those traditions and her own work. “ To make that connection felt really special for me.”

She decided to lean into that, to find inspiration for her art in her Chinese heritage.

“ Being a child of an immigrant family, there was a lot of importance placed on culture, but with the divide of being here in the Western diaspora, and especially in a rural context, that's not what my community is filled with,” she said. “And so if I wanted to really preserve that and carry it on to the next generation, I kind of took it upon myself to do that deep dive.”

She was inspired to focus on using her art to share stories of Chinese culture with rural communities across Minnesota. One collection, the Audacity to be Asian in Rural America: we owe you no apologies, was further inspired by the anti-Asian hate and violence that was prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her works, a blend of traditional painting and the symbols of the Chinese Zodiac commonly found on Chinese restaurant placemats, worked to bridge the cultural divide. Valentine used her artist’s talks at exhibitions as opportunities to have conversations with attendees, about cultural differences and racism, and to have an open and vulnerable conversation with the audience.

A painting of a tiger on a white wall decorated with plants.
Image: This painting titled "Teenage Tiger" was acquired by the Fergus Falls Public Library for their "Artwork Lending Program." The piece can be checked out from the library for a couple of months at a time, helping to make art more accessible. Photo submitted.

In many ways, she was using the skills she’d honed in her classes at UMD.

“ I would use that artist talk as an opportunity to share about my work, share those stories, but then open up the floor to people asking imperfect questions,” she said. “ We're in a time where political correctness is a point of tension in rural communities because people are afraid they're going to say the wrong thing. They're afraid that they're going to offend people. Or they're afraid that they're going to be written off as someone who is a bigot. That often silences them from trying to bridge the gaps in culture.”

Valentine now serves as Executive Director of the Kaddatz Gallery.  One of her favorite programs the organization hosts is called ArtREACH, which connects local artists with underserved communities, like those who are a part of transitional homes, people who have mental or physical disabilities, at-risk youth, and LGBTQ youth.

The impact within the community from programming like Art Reach has been huge, says Valentine. “We have testimony after testimony of students in that program who thought they were worthless, had no self-esteem, and at the end of that they're like, I'm an artist. I can do this. I have a community,” she says. “It’s not just skill building; it’s also esteem building.”

A woman smiling at the camera in front of a photo of Barack Obama
Image: Valentine posing for a selfie at the Rural Innovators event. As someone raised under the poverty line, Valentine credits a Pell Grant and Chapter 35 Benefits from her father’s service in Vietnam with making higher education a possibility. Photo submitted.

She stresses the importance of empowerment and avoiding a savior mentality. “We're not here to rescue anybody. We just recognize the dignity that people already have and remind them of that.”

That’s part of what led to Valentine being nominated to be a Rural Innovator.  Folks were encouraged to nominate anyone across the nation whose work in rural communities has made a positive impact.

Image: Valentine posing for a selfie at the Rural Innovators event. Photo submitted.

Arriving at the White House, Valentine didn’t quite know what to expect. She was there as one of 14 Rural Innovators from across the country. The room was filled with leaders in banking, healthcare, infrastructure, broadband, food sovereignty, heads of government agencies and more. She was the only artist and felt intimidated.

They were there for a Rural Innovator conference, demonstrating the importance of rural America. Valentine was surrounded by people who understood her way of life, that of living in the country’s smaller communities, and the draw of that experience.

In a panel presided over by Xochitl Torres Small, U.S. deputy secretary of agriculture, Valentine and her cohort discussed the importance of those communities, how she and others were creating jobs and helping people find success without leaving the places they call home.

“Something that I would love to bring forward is the narrative change that we're trying to instill across the nation when it comes to rural communities,” Valentine said: the concept of brain gain. That’s counter to the idea of brain drain, where young people leave their rural homes. Instead of leaving and never returning, with brain gain, “folks in their mid-thirties, late forties are coming back to rural communities, seeing it as a viable place to not only live and raise their family, but contribute their skills and further develop that place.”

In front of policymakers from across the country, Valentine shared her story, of her parents' journey to the US, of her journey away from and then back home, of confronting hate, and of using her art to meet challenges. “I used art as bridge-building, and now I get to make a living and a life in Otter Tail County.”

Panelists sit on a stage in a richly appointed room while an audience watches from chairs.
Image: Agriculture Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small moderates a panel during the White House Rural Innovators event at the Eisenhower Executive Building. (USDA photo by Christophe Paul)

Header Image: Nancy X. Valentine, Artist & Executive Director of Kaddatz Galleries (Minnesota), delivers some remarks during a discussion panel at the White House Rural Innovators event, Eisenhower Executive Building, Room 474, Washington D.C., Dec. 18, 2024. The Biden-Harris Administration is honoring 14 Rural Innovators from across America positively impacting their rural communities.

In 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration invited the public to nominate individuals taking action and ensuring their communities thrive for generations to come. White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden, White House Office of Public Engagement Director Stephen Benjamin, and Agriculture Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small headlined the event at the White House to celebrate the extraordinary accomplishments of Rural Innovators and highlight the Biden-Harris Administration’s investments in rural communities. To learn more about the Rural Innovators, please visit Rural.gov. (USDA photo by Christophe Paul)