(soft music)
- The word abundance has a big role in my life
because I like to think in abundance.
I don't like to think in scarcity.
I believe that what you think about, you bring about.
The brushstroke and the energy, that's this
abundance of energy that I sense when I'm outside.
My way of expressing that in a painting
is through movement with brush strokes.
My studio is out here kind of
on the edge of town in North Portland.
The river, the industry, the animals,
all of it impacts what I'm doing inside the studio.
I had had this conversation with a friend about abundance.
The next day, I'm coming over the St. John's Bridge
and there's this enormous orange boat.
It was just visually outstanding.
The name of the ship was Abundance.
It was from France and I came home,
I took a bunch of pictures and painted the barge.
These ships are coming from all over the place.
They are bringing things in, they're taking things out.
The river is the lifeline.
(sewing machine whirring)
One of my first installations was called "Loves Me."
I stitched little pieces of paper to attach
to a piece of rope that I made,
and then they all hung together
like these prayer flags, and it was based on
the flower-plucking activity loves me, loves me not
and I just wanted to land on "loves me"
so you always knew you were loved.
(soft music)
(ship horns blaring)
Being out here so close to the river, you don't hear
the sounds that I hear out here
when you're in inner Portland,
that's a different audio experience.
(birds cawing)
Four years ago I started using my phone
to record all the different sounds.
The owls, the crows, the fog horns,
the ship horns, everything that was unique to this area
so that I could use that at some point
in one of my installations, and I eventually did.
(frogs croaking, birds)
(river running, fog horn)
(crickets)
[Renee] So the way that I sort of visually see it
is the St. John's Bridge out here is sort of the portal,
the entrance and exit into Portland.
I feel like the Rood Family Pavilion is the bookend
to this because there's not a lot of large boats
that are going to go past that.
The Rood Family Pavilion is owned by OHSU
and it's in collaboration with the Ronald McDonald House.
My work there is on the seventh floor commons
and the 10th and 11th floor.
We have had family members that have had to use
the Ronald McDonald House at points in our life,
and so it felt like a little bit,
I could pay back some of that.
I always wanted to feel like I was in a really good place
when I came into the studio to do that work
because I wanted really good energy.
(soft music)
People that are in those circumstances,
They need something to feel good.
(engines rumbling)
One of my latest exhibits is
the state flowers of the United States
and that is in Concourse B at the Portland Airport.
There's 50 paintings of each state flower
of the United States of America.
I had received a small packet of wildflowers
as a gift, and I had just tossed them out in the garden
and the first one that popped was the California poppy.
I just did this painting and I liked it so much.
I thought, Oh, maybe I'll do Oregon Grape next.
It was this little incident
that inspired this domino effect.
(upbeat music)
- We have millions of travelers a year, tens of millions,
and the work has been so widely well-received
because it's so interactive and something that
all peoples from all places can relate to.
- [Renee] And even if they're not from the United States,
there's a bouquet of all of us there,
and I want to feel like we're welcoming
to all these people that are traveling.
(upbeat music)
I'm currently working on a new body of work
that's animal-centric.
I started with doing a bunch of little individual animals
just to start getting into the feel
of what I wanted to do with them, and then I started
to put them all into this bigger painting,
sort of a Noah's Ark type of situation
because of the barges and the ships out there on the river
that I see all the time, so I just wanted to
bring them into one vessel.
I'm really bringing the animals
into being in the spotlight right now.
(water rushing) (eerie music)
So there's this interaction between the industry and nature,
and as I'm watching it, I'm wanting to know
how we respect that, how we respect the industry,
we need it and how we respect the animals.
We are on their territory.
We moved into this area.
We moved into where the animals are,
but of course you just want to see everything
to continue to flourish and live together.
That's the ultimate goal.