The Happiness You Deserve: A site specific installation at Adams Square Mini Park

Renae Barnard has been selected by the Glendale Arts and Culture Commissions to display a temporary, site specific installation in the historic Adams Square Mini Park Gas Station. This work will be on view to the public daily beginning August 24 until September 30, 2021.

The Happiness You Deserve is a temporary, fiber-based installation considering the unique location of this historic structure: a 1936 Streamline Moderne Gas Station that exists in a small and unexpectedly green, nature-abundant park within the city. Renae is known for her fiber-based work using upcycled and found materials to explore the network of interactions between environment, perception, and well-being. For this project, she is considering the ways in which the sculpture might engage with the space, contemplating illumination in the evening hours to draw continuous attention to the nature rich site. Through the process of creating the work, Renae will be working through ideas surrounding the connection of well-being and nature.

Salvia Blooming at Adams Square Mini Park in May 2021. Photo by Renae Barnard.

Renae Barnard is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Los Angeles. Barnard received her Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate University and her BA from California State University, Los Angeles. She has recently completed projects in cooperation with the National Immigration Law Center and the City of Santa Monica Department of Cultural Affairs. She is a recipient of the Sue Arlen Walker and Harvey M. Parker Memorial Fellowship, the Armory Center for the Arts Teaching Artist Fellowship, The Ahmanson Annual Fellowship, Lincoln Fellowship Award, and Christopher Street West Art and Culture Grant.

About the Glendale Arts and Culture Commission and Adams Square Mini Park Project

The mission of Glendale Arts and Culture Commission is to enrich the human experience, consciously integrating arts and culture into the daily life of the people of Glendale. The Adams Square Mini Park project was completed by the City of Glendale to provide a green space in the middle of the business district for the densely populated Adams Hill neighborhood and to incorporate the historic 1936 Streamline Moderne Gas Station. The gas station is listed on the Glendale Register of Historic Resources.

The Woven Tale Press Art Spotlight: Renae Barnard

Art Spotlight: Renae Barnard

Cleanse

See Renae Barnard’s work in WTP 

Vol. VI #4

Cleanse

by Renae Barnard

paper and thread

9” x 13” x 6”

Renae Barnard is interested in exploring the network of interactions between perception, time, and the inadequacy of language. Much of her work grapples with what progress means, including changes in our environment, as well as changes in equality for women, LGBTQ people, and people of color. Barnard tries to propagate her own visions of “progress” by enabling others to connect and contribute to a collective commitment of kindness and compassion.

To see more of Renae Barnard's work visit:

www.renaebarnard.com

WTP Central Studio Tour: Renae Barnard

Studio Tour: Renae Barnard

The Studio Tour series offers an inside peek into the work environments of WTP artists, as well as insight into their creative process within these resonate spaces.

By Jennifer Nelson, WTP Feature Writer

Renae Barnard is recognized by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) as a Leadership in Energy Accredited Professional (LEED AP) and by the International Institute for Bau-biologie® & Ecology as a Building Biologie Practitioner. She has recently completed projects in cooperation with the National Immigration Law Center and the City of Santa Monica Department of Cultural Affairs. She is a recipient of the Sue Arlen Walker and Harvey M. Parker Memorial Fellowship, the Armory Center for the Arts Teaching Artist Fellowship, The Ahmanson Annual Fellowship, Lincoln Fellowship Award, and Christopher Street West Art and Culture Grant.

For Renae Barnard, her studio is on the go. She weaves in her lap; bowls of salt mixture are evaporating on her front porch; she may rent out temporary spaces around Los Angeles as her projects require. For her most recent public work, at Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, California, she shared space with other artists in a large commercial building in Boyle Heights. “Sharing space with other artists on a short-term basis allows me the access to equipment I may need,” she says, “like a spray room, wood shop, or kiln without the financial burden of permanent overhead.”

Nevertheless, she faces challenges when sharing space, the main one in Los Angeles, not having a parking space. This meant that Barnard had to haul sculpture materials down a sidewalk to a metered parking space. “It’s not always the most convenient, but it’s manageable,” she says.

For two years, her studio was a tiny white box in Claremont, a city thirty miles east of Los Angeles, where she kept weaving and sewing materials, as well as tripods for her photography. Many of the materials were incorporated into works such as “Displaced Tinder,” a sculpture of twisted medical exam paper wound around school chairs.

With time, she has realized form through repetitive movements like weaving, sewing, and twisting motions. Now she is experimenting with other modes of accumulating form, including a series of fiber sculptures of cotton batting, upholstery foam, and polyester fiberfill scraps discarded by furniture manufacturers. These materials are supplemented with water-based paints by Dunn Edwards, salt, water-based glues, and vinegar. “I’m interested in the ways in which basic chemistry might create form beyond those achievable with my hands,” says Barnard.

To work, Barnard requires silence and solitude. She doesn’t want music, visitors, or lingering clutter. Her process is generally exploratory, allowing room for discovery along the path and at the finish. There’s an undercurrent of chaos that she’s always wrestling with. The outcome is not a literal display of the problem, nor is it offering a solution. It is a record of the thought process and the struggle: “I’m interested in examining our situations and hopefully moving beyond the place where we stand now.”

See Renae Barnard’s work in 

Vol. VI #4

. 

Copyright 2018 Woven Tale Press LLC. All Rights Reserved.

"Renae Barnard: Promises of Progress" ArtBlitz Los Angeles

RENAE BARNARD : PROMISES OF PROGRESS

POSTED BY 

MEGAN ST. CLAIR

 - MARCH 7, 2017 - 

ARTIST PROFILE

Socially conscious Los Angeles artist, Renae Barnard opens up with me for an interview regarding her most recent public installation at Bergamot station. Her installation brings us in visually with its tactile presence and keeps us intellectually with her powerful conceptual engagement with social justice and women’s rights issues.

Tell me a little about your background leading up to Claremont Graduate University and living and working in Los Angeles, how do you feel like these decisions helped shape your career?

I studied studio art at California State University Los Angeles and focused on mixed-media installation with elements of photography, ceramic sculpture and video. I was chosen from a select group of students to exhibit my installation,  Almost Lovers Always Do, during a special exhibition, Infinite Encores at the Harriet and Charles Luckman Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2012).

It was during my last year at CSULA that I began working on my first socially engaged project,  How Do You Know?

“What is a woman?” “What is a man?” “How do you know if you are one?” Despite how simple these questions may seem, they are often difficult and complicated to answer. It is the broad range of responses that emphasizes this. This work invites viewers to consider the social and psychological dynamics that charge the simplest of questions. Visitors have the opportunity to contribute their own responses both during the exhibition and afterwards by email or postal mail. The installation is ultimately fueled, created, and received by the community at large—not just those who attend, but also those who responded to the prompts initially, and those who provide additional responses after viewing the project.

Since its inception How Do You Know? has been installed at the San Francisco Center and the West Hollywood Public Library (as part of the Christopher Street West Pride Celebration), shown at the CSULA COMA Gallery and the LA Municipal Gallery, as well been installed inside of a U-Haul truck (as part of Install Weho) and in an East Los Angeles underground tunnel as part of This Magnificent World. The video documenting the installation was shown in 2013 as part of the Sick Exhibition in San Francisco and the Fargo-Moorhead Film Festival, and screened in 2014 at the Queens Museum, NY, the Women and Minority Film Festival, Tampa International LGBT Film Festival, Long Beach LGBTQ Film Festival, Park Circle Film Society Festival and the Boston LGBT Film Festival.

 Throughout my undergraduate studies, I had the opportunity to show my work at galleries and film festivals internationally. This gave me the opportunity to work with international curators and art professionals expanding my interest in social engagement and public practice.

Tell me about your artistic goals within your practice and how the materials you use have influenced this practice.

 I’m interested in indulging in the pleasure and tactility of making while exploring the network of interactions between perception, time and the inadequacy of language. Many of my sculptures are worked within inches of collapse and reflect my attraction to the imperfect and the aged. My work considers the ways in which identity is crafted and regulated by repetitive language and how realities are shaped through social ideologies. I am deeply invested in community-building, environmental issues, and social justice.

Tell me about this current piece at Bergamot Station and what your artistic vision was for installing it.

Propagate Progress began as a participatory community-building event that culminated with a temporary sculptural installation. On May 21,2016 the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) trains opened to public passengers for the first time at 26th St/ Bergamot Station. Supported by a team of artists (friends) and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), I invited Bergamot Gallery visitors, train passengers and the public at large to discuss their visions for progress and to contribute their promises to the future by writing or drawing on large-scale paper rolls. What are the promises that we are willing to make to ourselves and each other? In what ways, small and large, can we contribute to a sustainable future?

By manually twisting together the shared community promises, a rope-like form was created and ultimately used as the primary building material of the sculpture. In the same way that our will to achieve progress strengthens when we come together, the frail paper became more substantive with every twist. The completed sculpture served as an ephemeral symbol of our collective commitment to progress. However, the sculpture is not intended as a permanent monument. In the same way “progress” today becomes history tomorrow, this work is about transformation and change.

How did you become interested in public artwork versus traditional gallery settings, and how does your practice benefit from this public outdoor exposure?

I’m especially interested in the effects of human and environmental forces as a component of the installations development. For example, Propagate Progress was installed at Bergamot Station’s “People Park” where the community originally gathered (May 2016) to discuss our hopes, fears and promises. A variety of pigments, mark making techniques and conditions were applied by the participants who created results substantially different from what might have occurred in a controlled studio environment. The personal connection to the forming of the work allowed us the opportunity to know one another, connecting our personal challenges to global and local social/ environmental/ political problems.

Exposure to wind, sun and rain accelerated the sculptures destruction, rapidly shifting our vibrant promises for a better tomorrow into faded, decomposing pulp.

What do you think about the timeliness of the work in the state of the world today?

Notions of progress can be riddled with judgment based on differing points of view. For example, developers often view gentrification as “progress” because it will improve building standards and/or introduce new services while long-time residents of a gentrifying area may view it as “regress” because it would change or eliminate the culture of their neighborhood.

 When I first engaged the community in May 2016 we were in the primary stages of the presidential election process. By the time the work was installed on December 15th, many Americans were frightened of the changes that were promised (threatened) under the guise of progress. Today, the installation is gone, but more than ever before our challenges remain.

 Much of my artwork wrestles with what progress means, including changes in our environment, as well as changes in equality for women, LGBTQs and people of color. I try to affect my own vision for progress through making and exhibiting artwork about these issues.

Renae Barnard’s work is layered with meaning and consciousness that allows everyone to engage on their own unique level. She is making political work that is powerful and strong without hitting you over the head with it, rather you get to let it sink in as you spend time with her and the work she is making. Her poetic gestures within her practice symbolize a larger community and struggle that is both singular and shared. You can find more of Renae’s work here:

www.renaebarnard.com

renaebarnard@gmail.com

By: Megan St. Clair

3/7/17

Renae Barnard Film Festival Laurels

New Work!