April Program:  Absence/Presence with Renee Azenaro

April Program:  Absence/Presence with Renee Azenaro

Tuesday Evening, April 28th at 7:00 PM

Multi-media artist Renée Azenaro will give a talk titled “Absence, Presence” at the Redlands Art Association Gallery at 7 p.m. April 28. Renée was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.  She received her bachelor’s degree in fine art from the City University of New York and her MFA from Vermont College in Montpelier, Vermont.

As an educator, Renée has developed art programs for underserved populations in order to make art available to those whose access and opportunity is limited. She has taught in the art departments of Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, The Sage Colleges in Albany, New York, and currently at the University of Redlands.

Renee-Azenaro-Photo

Renée works in a variety of media including installation, sculpture, works on paper, drawing, painting and mixed media.  Her curatorial gallery experiences have been natural extensions of her artwork and social concerns.  Her work has been extensively exhibited throughout the United States and internationally in Greece, Italy, Romania, Puerto Rico and Serbia. Her work is in several private collections and has been exhibited most recently at the Brand Art Center in Glendale, CA., and at an invitational sculpture exhibition at the Parks Art Center in Idyllwild, CA.

In her art, Renée continues to explore the experience of absence/presence in life: the understanding of what is there as it is understood by what is not there.  The materials selected in the making of her work are easily found and are selected for their workability, re-purposing potential and beauty.

In her one-woman show titled “Occlusions” at the University of Redlands last year, Renee exhibited a collection of crocheted stainless steel pieces hanging together in groups.  “The shadows they created were transitory and changed with the lighting just as the ways in which we navigate daily life and how we think we understand it changes depending on our views,” she said. “I deal with how we see things and how we think we understand things but we don’t.  “In her work, she is searching for the essence of something, for a truth that makes us keep going as human beings. “My work is labor-intensive and not manufactured and that is important to me,” she said.

She enjoys the temporary aspect of her work, much of which is destroyed after a while. “I like the ephemerality of it and have no need to keep it,” she said. “After all, we are all temporary here.  ”Come hear Renee discuss her work and philosophy of art at her upcoming talk.