Tricksters and Transformations: Textile Arts Los Angeles Exhibition

“Textiles have the universally demonstrated capacity for holding meaning, establishing connections, and creating healing. As we emerge, on many levels, from the darkness into the light of awareness of isolation and injustice we have an opportunity and obligation to examine the status quo. This exhibition will allow the artist to step into the now and make work that opens doors within themselves, thereby acting as a portal to a collective resurgence into a renewed relationship with the world. This awakening inspires transformation.”

Renae Barnard is showing her mixed media work, Love > Shelter.

When: Saturday, September 4, 2021 to Sunday, September 26, 2021.

*Soft Opening Saturday, September 4, 2021 3:00 PM 5:00 PM

Where: Helms Design Center 8745 Washington Boulevard Culver City, CA, 90232 United States (map)

Detail of Love> Shelter by artist Renae Barnard.

There is a deep potential for the artist to act as trickster, agent of change, or boundary crosser. After the pandemic and the social upheaval of the past eighteen months, the artist has gained renewed agency for creating more enlightened definitions of meaning and new ways of seeing.

The pandemic can be a portal, serving as a provocation to transformation.

We ask:

• What kinds of conversations can the artist communicate and express after this moment?

• What was the conventional wisdom?

• What layers need to be exposed?

• What patterns need disrupting or subverted?

• What ideas need shedding?

• What and how do we heal?

• How do you translate this sense of agency and transformation into your own practice?

• How can the medium, process and history of textiles serve as a fertile conceptual ground for our work?

  —-Textile Arts Los Angeles

Found and recycled materials are the foundation of Renae’s sculptural work.

Renae is delighted to be showing with friends old and new. The featured artists are

Beth Abaravich

Hammad Abid

Berfin Ataman

Renae Barnard

Charlotte bird

Anne M Bray

Carrie Burkle

Debbie Carlson

Molly Cleator

Debra Disman

Doshi

Sally England

Emilyn Eto

Lea Feinstein

Michelle Flores

Dellis Frank

Gail Fraser

Anna Faye Korngute

Diana Fullmer and Nick Kuriyama

Polly Jacobs Giacchina

Karen Gibson Roc

Annette Heully

Lesley Kice Nishigawara

Michael Koch

Dong Kyu Kim

Tina Linville

Carmen Mardonez

Patricia Martin

Victoria May

Michelle Montjoy

Wendy Osher

Antonia Price

Michael Rohde

Connie Rohman

Gwen Samuels

Karen Sikie

Maryrose Smyth

Ruth Souza

Meredith Strauss

Dusty Taylor Guerra

Cameron Taylor Brown

Lydia Tjioe Hall

Tamara Tolkin

Elise Vazelakis

Kay Whitney

Peggy Wiedemann

Susan Zimmerman

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.

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.