Alumna Renee Couture @ Gray Space

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Renee Couture reneemcouture@gmail.com

Web: http://grayspaceproject.com/

GRAY SPACE: Oregon Artists Present

A Cube-Shaped Itinerant Art Space

Viewing in the Northbound Cabin Creek Rest Area, 20 miles north of Roseburg (milepost 142), Saturday September 30, 11 am

(September 2017,  Cabin Creek Rest Area/I-5, Oregon) GRAY SPACE is a cube-shaped itinerant art space, welded and wheeled by artists. The artists of the GRAY SPACE group will install their individual work inside the 6’x6’x6’ GRAY SPACE and park it for a day at various locations throughout Oregon. Each artist will create a different art installation. GRAY SPACE intentionally engages an audience without the confines and expectations of a gallery or art center.

Its first travel location along the I-5 corridor is the Northbound Cabin Creek Rest Area, just 20 miles north of Roseburg. GRAY SPACE will be deployed Saturday, September 30, 11 am – 3 pm. This event is free and open to the public.

Renee Couture is the second artist to install work in GRAY SPACE module. This work, titled The Highest Fence, focuses on ideas of boundaries and borders – how they impact our lives and how we move through the world. She explores this phenomena through layers and layers of large-scale, cut paper fences as a fence is a man-made barrier that encloses, surrounds, confines, separates, protects, and shows ownership. The idea for The Highest Fence emerged from a variety of sources including the artist’s own life living in rural southern Oregon’s O&C “checkerboard land ownership”,  proverbs, and recent political commentary on fence/wall building.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Renee Couture works in sculpture, photography, and drawing. After receiving her BA and before receiving her MFA in Visual Art, Renee rambled about the United States and South America working a wide range of jobs from camp counselor to wild land fire fighter to gourmet goat cheese maker, international backpacker to bank employee. She has exhibited her work nationally in group exhibitions and as a solo artist. Renee has won two Career Opportunity Grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, and also participated in residency programs at Jentel, Vermont Studio Center, Playa, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Djerassi. She jumped at the opportunity to be participate in GRAY SPACE project out of a drive expand art practice and connect with new audiences. Renee is currently Adjunct Fine Art Faculty at Umpqua Community College. Visit Artist’s Website: www.rcoutureart.com

ABOUT GRAY SPACE PROJECT:

The GRAY SPACE artists are Kate Ali, Lee Imonen, Michael Boonstra, Kathleen Caprario, Sandee McGee, Andrew Myers, Leah Wilson, Renee Couture and Vicki Amorose. This group of Oregon artists gathers around an ideaphoric concept: the traveling installation space, freely accessible to random audiences. In its first year, GRAY SPACE will be parked at various locations in Oregon. The artist will be present to talk about their work. GRAY SPACE intentionally engages an audience without the confines and expectations of a gallery or art center. While on site, the project activates public space and explores the interplay between site, context, art and viewer. GRAY SPACE artists find momentum together and tap the generative resource of each other’s creative drive.

CONTACT: Email Renee Couture reneemcouture@gmail.com

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Featured image: image credit: Kate Ali, Gray Space SpecsRunning sneakers | Nike