Skate Unity: Kate Renee Skatedeck

April 8, 2013 in Kate Renee | No comments

I was asked to participate in an opportunity where artists paint recycled skatedecks and donate them to help support a local non profit.

skateboard

My deck was originally stained purple on the underside and green on the top. I sanded down the varnish and the purple as much as I could. Then I painted the base a nice light color which mimicked the wood color of skateboards.

skateboard2

I took a few in-progress images from inside my studio. You can see how the piece evolved.

P1030820Here is the finished skatedeck. It is two octopuses with tangled tentacles. The suction cups are painted with two iridescent gold shades of paint. 
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The tentacles wrap around each other in a yin-yang like composition.

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  I painted two coats of Polyacrylic to seal in the paint and protect the deck.

P1030840I donated the deck to the Skate Unity exhibition. This exhibition had over 50 artists create and donate skatedecks.

Power Objects and an Ode to Gluten: Meet Barbara Bridges

April 1, 2013 in Kate Renee, Women's Resources of Minnesota (WARM) | No comments

This is the first in a series of interview-based posts that highlight the mentors and protégés in the 2013-2014 Mentor Program cycle of WARM (Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota). These women artists are working together for two years to help build relationships, foster creativity and support each others professional careers. Kate Renee is interviewing each member in the program and sharing some of their art, projects, goals and involvement in the WARM program.

Kate: While normally I’d start out asking who you are, I already know Barbara very well! Barbara and I are both protegees together with the same mentor. However, please introduce yourself!

Barbara: Greetings, I am Barbara Bridges.

Kate: How are you involved in WARM program?

Barbara: I am the protégé of the extraordinary Jill Waterhouse.

 Jill at a valentine card making event.

Kate: What do you do as an artist? Tell me a bit about your current projects.

Barbara: I make art from artist fabricated components in a variety of media and found power objects. I organize the objects to create meaning and provoke discussions and reflection on a wide variety of social topics including sustainability, living a considered life (Talking Chairs and Onion/Academia Nuts) and recovery (Reflection Pool). Click here and cruise around.

Kate: Can you share some of your work?

Onion/Academia Nuts

Multimedia: photographs, handmade paper, wood, motherboards

Dimensions: 36″ x 52″

Barbara: The artwork “Onion/AKA Academia Nuts” is a hybrid style of art which incorporates conceptual and modernistic characteristics. “Onion/AKA Academia Nuts” and artworks like it, represent our “lived experience” in visual form. The visual artwork and first chapter of “Academia Nuts” takes you on an insider tour of the surreal world of the academy. This art work explores and records, in visual and text form,  the firestorm created at Bemidji State University when the artist brought digital teaching and learning to the campus in 2001. Onion/AKA Academia Nuts could also be subtitled: ‘Smart People Behaving Badly.” The first chapter of the graphic novel, “Academia Nuts” will be released.

Kate: Since we have been in the WARM program together, you’ve talked a lot about your Ode to Gluten piece. I am excited to see it exhibited during Art-a-Whirl this year in the Grain Belt Building. Can you share a little bit about this piece?

 

Kate: I know that you are a teacher, can you tell me a little about your career as an arts educator?

Barbara: I received two Minnesota Art Educator of the Year awards in 1998 and 2008 from the Art Educators of Minnesota and the National Art Educators Association. My teaching career began in Maine in 1976 where I was an art teacher. Since then, I have expanded my sphere of influence to Mexico, the Caribbean and Minnesota. I have partnered with various Minnesota institutions such as the Minneapolis School District, the Minnesota Online High School, Perpich Center, the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Weisman Museum, and the Minnesota Museum of Art. The online discussion group ArtsNet Minnesota came out of those collaborations. ArtsNet Minnesota currently boasts a membership of over 600 as well as a site that contains over 8,000 pages of material.

Kate: Do you have another work of art you would like to share?

Multimedia:  Wood, metal, found  power objects, paint, plastic. Everything.

Talking Stick  8: X 3 “   Wood, fur, bones, teeth

Dimensions: Each Chair is approximately 3’ X 3’ X 4.5’ tall

Barbara: The installation “Talking Chairs”  was designed to  provides you with the opportunity, extends you an invitation, provides  a safe environment  under the guise of performance art, to reflect on the “Meaning and Purpose of Life” from different worldviews.

Kate: What is the performance act to the Talking Chairs piece?

Barbara: The artist and actors start the discussion by sharing their views on the  “Meaning and Purpose of Life” from their interpretation of the worldview of the persona of the chair they occupy. Only the person in possession of the talking stick may speak. YOU will be invited to take a seat and join the discussion. Please add objects to the Talking Stick to imbue the talking stick with the power of your voice.

Kate: Now that we know more about you and your artwork, how did you get involved with WARM?

Barbara: After a long career as a teacher and creating art in isolation for many of those years- especially the last decade- I needed the fellowship of a community of artists and direction on the most appropriate way to enter the culture of makers here in Minneapolis.

Kate: At the beginning of the program, we had a day where Jill’s protegees met together and created our work plan. It was fun to meet each other, talk about our art work and plans for our career. What are your goals for this year in the program?

Barbara: I hope to develop new creative associates who are trying to live considered lives.  I want to support their efforts and hope they will support mine in that direction.

Kate: Both you and I have been busy attending as many WARM events as we can attend. What has been your most favorite WARM event? What happened there and why did you like it?

Barbara: All the events have been inspiring in different ways.  Jill took us to the history center to view the Roz journal project. It really jazzed me to take my Travel Journal project over the top. Click here to view the nascent beginnings. Click here to see Kate’s report on our visit.

Kate: Can you share the process for joining WARM? 

Barbara: A friend in North Dakota mentioned the program to me. I found it two weeks before this protégé cycle started. I attended the information sessions, went to the mentor presentations and decided it was just exactly what I was looking for to help me move into this next part of my life.

Kate: What is the one artistic change you have experienced so far?

Barbara: I am positively ON FIRE for making, thinking and talking about art. I need to work on my craftsmanship and the shear output has been helpful in that area.

Kate: What is one thing you have realized about yourself while in WARM?

Barbara: Most of my professional career, I have had to hide who I am. Letting people know I was an art specialist just disempowered my voice for change. This fact, combined with the steam punk style of art I create, was a liability. I feel set free. I realized I DO have something important, and of interest to others, to share.

Kate: What is one challenge you are facing while in the program?

Barbara: Still having a 60 hour a week job. ONE MORE YEAR. ONE MORE YEAR.

Kate: Thank you for introducing yourself Barbara! Where can we find more information about you and your artwork?

Barbara: http://bridgescreate.com. Select “Art”

 

Paper (Ex) Change at Echo Arts

March 25, 2013 in Altered Esthetics, Exhibitions, Gamut Gallery, Kate Renee, Solo Exhibition Program | No comments

Paper (Ex) Change group exhibition at Echo Arts seeks to explore how we alter and use paper as a medium and as a tool to exchange ideas, communication and information between people. The participating artists, who work in a variety of media, are coming together to explore the way paper impacts their art work by using the theme of traditional anniversaries; the first anniversary theme being paper.

Julia Helen Rice, Sarah Theisen, Kristy Childress, Marnie Erpestad, Mark Elton, Mary Foot and Kate Renee mark their one year anniversary of working together by exploring paper as a media and tool to create, communicate and interact through art. The artists first met through the 2012 program cycle of Altered Esthetics’ Solo Exhibition Program, facilitated by board member and program developer, Kate Renee. This group of artists decided to continue to work together and collaborate by fostering creative work and creating a supportive atmosphere for one another. The artists plan to continue to work together by exhibiting in consecutive annual exhibitions based on the anniversary theme. Next year, the group will base their art on the second theme of anniversaries, cotton.

Many of the works exhibited in Paper (Ex) Change will have an interactive aspect to the piece. Viewers can come interact with these paper themed works on the opening night of the Saint Paul Art Crawl at Echo Arts Gallery. The reception begins at 5pm.

Marnie Erpestad will have large photographic works which explore the personality of letters. She invites the viewer to compose the proceeding lines of the letter by building off of the words on the person before them.

Mary Foote builds her piece on a framework which gives the viewer simple instructions to follow. The viewer will then be asked to post publicly what they have made on a website.

Kate Renee has exhibited her traveling installation The Bad Fortune Cookie in two prior exhibitions including Food Fight at Altered Esthetics and Imaginarium at Gamut Gallery. This exhibition allows the viewer to literally take the art off the wall and take home a wooden fortune cookie that has a funny, sarcastic, sassy, paper fortune. Kate also will be exploring the concept of capsulated dreams. She asks the viewer to consider and recognize their own goals and provides an opportunity for the viewer follow their own dreams.

Julia Helen Rice creates a game of visual art telephone. Using paper drawings as the medium she will be initiating a participatory art piece that highlights how human communications and relationships are colored and shaped by our individualities. This individuality often causes misunderstandings and misperceptions but these misunderstandings and misperceptions are exactly what lead to innovation and creativity. This piece demonstrates how all the misunderstandings led to new and interesting works.

Mark Elton will be exhibiting an oversized comic called Macrocomic. He explores how stories, ideas and messages can be told when the vessel is released from the need to be compact. Elton’s Macrocomic will be anything but a mini comic. Through his piece, Mark will explore the written and visual storytelling potential when we reconsider size.

Kristy Childress has mixed media drawings of landmasses and snowforms connected with threads. She explores the physical and the mental space between ourselves and others and the connections that we hold on to.

Work will also be featured by artist Sarah Theisen. The exhibition will be at Echo Arts during the 2013 Saint Paul Art Crawl. The gallery space will be open to the public during the Art Crawl April 26-28th 2013. There you can meet the artists and interact with their paper themed pieces. The exhibition will be up April 26th – May 17th 2013 and is located at Echo Arts Gallery 275 East 4th Street Suite B200 Saint Paul, MN. Gallery hours are on weekends during the exhibition: Fridays 4-8 PM Saturdays 10-8 PM Sundays 12-4 PM 

Check Advantage and Kate Renee Checkbook Covers

March 18, 2013 in Beauties Behaving Badly, Check Advantage, Kate Renee | No comments

I am working alongside Check Advantage to bring to you a selection of artistic checks, checkbook covers and address labels! I have 4 different series of checks including: adorable animals, frozen treats, trolls and princess series. Pictured below is the four varieties of checkbook covers that have my artwork on them Click on each of the checkbook cover images to link to the Check Advantage page to see the accompanying checks.

Unicorn checkbook cover from the Adorable Animals Collection

Popsicles checkbook cover from the Frozen Treats Series

Yellow trolls checkbook cover from the Troll Series

Snow White checkbook cover from the Princess Series

Head on over to the Check Advantage website to browse the Kate Renee artist series and see all of the checks, checkbook covers and address labels available.

Checkbook Covers, Checks and Address Label Art with Check Advantage

March 11, 2013 in Check Advantage, Kate Renee | 1 comment

A side project I have been quietly working on is a collaboration with Check Advantage. As of last week, I am a licensed artist. This means that I have checks, checkbook covers, and address labels printed with my artwork on them. Below is the information about me that Check Advantage has on my artist profile. I also have a few samples of the materials available online. 

Artist Biography from Check Advantage:

Up-and-coming, pop culture artist Kate Renee’s work seems pretty cute at first glance, but you’ll also notice some edginess to her art when you take a closer look. She says she’s been creative since she was just a kid, and she still draws inspiration from the movies, books and characters that colored her childhood. “Lately, I have been working on my Beauties Behaving Badly series where I depict misbehaving Disney princesses and other literature and pop culture female characters,” she says.

Blue troll check from the Troll Series

Check Advantage is excited to present select works of Kate Renee on personal checks, address labels and checkbook covers as part of our Licensed Artist Series. Renee describes her art as “lowbrow.” However, her paintings certainly don’t reflect the literal definition of the word. Lowbrow is actually an underground artistic movement, which came out of Los Angeles in the 1970s. It is also known as pop surrealism.

Cinderella address label from the Princess Series

She has been working with acrylics to create her flat, bold-colored character paintings since 2008. Lately, she’s been using flat wooden panels as a canvas. While her artwork appears somewhat simplistic, Renee also hopes to capture the complexities of human nature. “By juxtaposing anthropomorphic objects, food, and animals, I invite my viewers into the piece through childlike sophistication,” she explains in her artist statement.

Unicorn checkbook cover from the Adorable Animal Series

Kate Renee has become very involved with the arts community in the Minneapolis area – where she lives and works. After graduating with degrees in Fine Arts and Art History from the University of Minnesota, she has worked at a variety of local galleries and art institutes. As a young artist, her recognizable style is quickly gaining a reputation. She’s held exhibitions around the country as well as in Japan. In addition to painting, Kate draws, practices the craft of book binding and makes unique jewelry. She also runs a popular art blog called The Suction Cup where she writes about her work.

Popsicle check from the Frozen Treats Series

Find out more about this artist when you visit katerenee.com. That’s where you can see more of her artwork and order other merchandise Kate has created.

I will be blogging about the checks, checkbook covers and address labels that are available in future blogs. Until then, head on over to Check Advantage to get your own Kate Renee checks!

Art Inventory Blog Series

March 4, 2013 in Kate Renee | No comments

Interested in learning about art inventories? I wrote a three part blog series on how to make an art inventory. Starting with the basics, I guest blogged on Local Artist Interviews and shared how to start making one. This is a good place to go if you have one started and you want to make sure your inventory has enough information.

Part 2 and 3 was posted here, on the Suction Cup. Part 2 is a more thorough post about updating and making your inventory information packed. Its for those artists who like to be organized.

The third and final article is about some last minute tips to take your inventory to the edge of perfection. It has some ideas for organizing and presenting your inventory. Through out these three articles, I share my own inventory. I use one piece of artwork to demonstrate the different ways to list your art and the important information.

Working on your inventory is a big project. It takes time, energy and focus. I walked artist Margie Gamache through the inventory process and she ended up with a valuable tool for her art career. Not sure if making an inventory is worth your time and effort? Just head on over to article one, and read the beginning. There I list reasons and purposes for your inventory.

 

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