After completing her MFA studies at Kanazawa College of Art as a Fulbright Fellow and Japanese Government Scholar, Valerie spent three years on a city-sponsored residency at the Utatsuyama Craft Workshop in Kanazawa, Japan. She was recently awarded a second Fulbright grant by the U.S. Department of Education for her proposal Porcelain Fever: Contemporary Kutani Practitioners and Processes, and returned to Kanazawa as a guest researcher at the Institute of Art and Design, Kanazawa College of Art in Summer and Fall 2011.