Renée Owen

• River Tracings: Mapping the Dead Zones - 60 inch long indigo dyed triptych embroidered with 400 river stones & roots, an homage to illegal water diversions effect on the Navarro River.
• The Tide Takes Her: The changing tide depicted by 1500 embroidered reef knots, a tactile ritual honoring the artist’s mothers’ death and ashes spread at sea. Covers of natural indigo-dyed vintage kimono silk & shibori.
• Firestormed: Atlas of a Lost Neighborhood: Installed in shape of satellite map, plant dyed & eco-printed paper embroidered and burned to evoke the homes & lives lost in one of California's most deadly wildfires.
• This Old (Demolished) House: Embroidered x's on felt plat maps mark vintage homes demolished in a decade in a historic neighborhood, landfills overflowing with their bones.
• This Old Demolished House II: Mr. Mitchell & His Chickens: Repurposed paint tarps embroidered and collaged with photos of vintage homes, mounted on felt, depicting people displaced by progress.
• On the Backs of Slaves: The history of coffee in rusty objects of torture & woven coffee filters, paper fragile as skin, the red thread like stitches sewn into whip marks on a slave's back.
• Transplants: An elegy to trees & the clear-cutting of non-native flora. Paper pages ecoprinted with leaves, roots, seeds, kitchen scraps & rusty metal. Aren’t we all invasive species?
• Stitchwork: An homage to grandmothers “women’s work.” Markmaking embroidery, like blood from needle pricks, on coptic bound pages of needlework patterns & vintage covers.
• Contrails: Abstract calligraphic painted artists' book and plant dyed, eco-printed felt pouch, a poetic testament to saying goodbye to mountain wilds.
• Lost in the Forest: An invitation to tread lightly on the earth. Naturally dyed and ecoprinted pages of embroidered plants, silk covers and calligraphied poetry in a felt wrapper.
• Resuscitation: Linen quilt of old book cloth from landfill books, vintage book spines, paper, embroidery & frottage, in homage to the disappearing practice of reading real books.
• Hole in the Moon: A modern Victorian book of days, this sculptural, multi-layered book encapsulates the seasons, poetry and found objects from the artist’s daily walks.
• Sliding Home: Silhouettes from vintage photos, embroidery & original poetry connect us to our roots, the artist’s ancestors, and the slower rhythms of the south in the last century.
• Insect Life: A curiosity cabinet of natural & found objects. Artist-made box with ecoprinted vintage silk, housing a mini handbound book of Victorian pages on the life of bugs.
• Vanishing Act: An old wooden letterpress type case houses a time capsule of handbound miniature books, vintage photos & objects from bygone towns & libraries, all vanishing.
• Extinct: Illuminating mankind's destruction of our natural world. An accordion wire-bound book of bones, vintage book cloth, scrap metal & found objects on a redwood slab.