"Throughout my childhood growing up in Missoula, Montana, I played the violin. When I started working on this instrument---stripping the varnish off and dismantling the top---it felt both transgressive and liberating. I had the opportunity to say something with a violin that I had never had before.

My piece, "Retreat" is about the conflicted state of a physical world in flux---the polar retreats, global warming---and my own personal need to find a retreat or refuge from that. Music, literature and art have offered me a retreat as both a child and an adult.

I enjoyed using the actual form of the instrument to convey my ideas: the rounded top and bottom of the instrument's body as the polar caps and the tapered fingerboard for the letters, which seems to imply a vanishing point
somewhere in the distance. "

Born in Missoula, Montana and educated at Wellesley College, Renée is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin with an MFA in Studio Art. At the university she developed a strong body of work that combines my interests in painting and sculpture. Studied the history and development of 3-dimensional objects in the 20th century, contemporary art theory with an emphasis on multi-culturalism, gender and identity, art in the public domain and
contemporary art practices.