PENDLETON - Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts (CSIA) is welcoming Vanessa Renwick to the studio from August 26-September 6. Renwick is a recipient of a 2018 Golden Spot Residency Award at Crow's Shadow. This Artist-in-Residence award allows Oregon-based contemporary artists invited to the studio to work in a new medium; it is generously supported by The Ford Family Foundation.
Vanessa Renwick is primarily known in the Northwest as an avant-garde filmmaker, often working with themes of nature and human interactions with the land. Her work in poetic non-fiction cinema is punctuated by a wry sense of humor exemplified by the name of her production company, the Oregon Department of Kick Ass. Renwick's work-whether film, installation, show posters, or public interventions-is permeated by her counter-culture punk aesthetic and a sharp cultural critique.
She has screened work in a wide array of locations around the world, including: The Museum of Modern Art, Light Industry, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Art Basel, Oberhausen, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Centre Pompidou, The Andy Warhol Museum, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam, among numerous others. In 2016 she presented Next Level Fucked Up, an ambitious 7-channel video installation at the Portland Art Museum. Notably, Renwick received a Bonnie Bronson Fellowship in 2014. She is represented in Portland by PDX Contemporary Art.
Renwick will work at Crow's Shadow developing limited-edition prints, which will be hand pulled by Crow's Shadow's collaborative Master Printer, Judith Baumann. Most artists-in-residence at CSIA create two images for editioning, which is typically completed in the following months. Crow's Shadow Press specializes in fine art lithography, a labor-intensive printmaking process where each color is created with a different lithography plate, and represents an additional run through a traditional manual press. Depending on the complexity of the image and the number of colors, an edition can take months to complete. Upon completion, the prints will be available for sale and one copy of each edition will enter CSIA's permanent collection, which is frequently lent to various cultural and learning institutions around the region and nationally.
At the end of Renwick's artist residency the public is invited to Crow's Shadow for an artist talk and studio visit, which will occur from 5:00-7:00 pm on THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6th, with the artist speaking at 5:30 pm.
