Chris LaValley received her BFA in Painting and Drawing from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1989, and her MA in Art Education and Ceramics from the University of New Mexico in 1997. She lives in the Kansas City area where she is a working artist and art teacher at Blue Valley Northwest High School. By day she inspires students in the worlds of painting, ceramics, and drawing; spending her free time and summers on her own work-mostly painting & drawing.

She has shown work throughout the Kansas City area, including the Kansas City Artist Coalition, Pi Art Gallery, Vanessa Lacy Gallery, Johnson County Library, Paper Birch Landing Gallery and was accepted for the second time to display work at the “State of the Arts” show at R.G. Endres Gallery in Prairie Village. She has also presented workshops at the National Art Education Association and Kansas Art Education Association Conferences.