American Culture & Conversations
My art explores characteristics of a contemporary American culture and life at its worst, best and average. My goal is to illustrate through paintings, installations, and sculptures aspects of our American experiment. The projects come from research, observations, media, podcasts and conversations about individual experiences and the commonalities of everyday life. I mine an array of contemporary topics around climate, media influence, powerful structures, cultural enigmas or obsessions, our myths and contradictions through different points of view and projects. You will often find a variety of materials, written notes from research or conversations, and childlike doodles as I document and unravel issues, reconstructing or editing these threads of thoughts into a final project which are meant to be either humorous or a serious discussion.
In conceptual art, aesthetics is often less important than the idea, or the conversation created with a viewer. It often can appear chaotic, messy, or puzzling and certainly “non-traditional.” This is not to say that what draws myself or a viewer is meant be repulsive, or never pleasing, but the hope is that it is always engaging. It is this aspect in conceptual art in which I am interested in. I find refuge in rejecting traditional frameworks and existing parameters, pushes me to innovate and grow as a contemporary artist.
In 2021 I started research and work which investigates our objects and possessions. After my brother experienced a total loss of his home when his entire village burned down from a wildfire in 2021, I have been interested in the power of our objects in the spaces we inhabit. Why do we collect and keep the STUFF we have? What are the histories, psychological and emotional hold on us? Why do they have so much power over us or how do we use it to influence others? Why do we use our possessions to reflect our personalities? I am currently exploring how to transform objects to open the communication between our inner being and the spaces we inhabit. What is transportable, or memory? By shifting or re-contextualizing an object within a space, its identity, history and memory can be discovered and exploited. To have complete control over things, has not been easy, but certainly interesting and made me keenly aware of the poetic imagination of an object and a room I am in, or been in. The spaces whisper and I am listening.
Renee (Noelle) Cheesman, Updated 8/2/2022