about me
artist, educator, & independent curator
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As a whole, my creative pursuits serve as a compass that guides me in the continued processes of spiritual, cultural, and relational wayfinding, linked by a desire to feel more connected to myself, others, and the world at large. When I work, I allow my intuition to guide me through periods of research and rigorous making, a cycle that is dotted by a rhizomatic network of ever-shifting rituals and momentary channelings. Working in this way helps me to transmute my various (melancholic) preoccupations by externalizing them, each resulting artwork existing as an attempt at giving material form to the immaterial, however futile the endeavor. My studio practice thus functions as a kind of reclamation, or in other words, as a site to break bread with ghosts.
Lately, the focus of my practice has been in exploring notions of place, orientation, and belonging within the increasingly alienating landscape of late-stage capitalism. Just as swallows are seen as the harbingers of spring, what do we bring with us when we arrive? What do we leave behind when we say goodbye? And if we are the ground beneath us in the same way that we are our ancestors or the moon, in what ways do our lives ripple out into the worlds around us? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself, addressed through a poetic approach to making that allows me to stretch into new possibilities of what is and what is not-yet here.
As such, my work emerges from an ever-evolving constellation of materials, symbols, gestures, and experiences, given shape through processes of abstraction that deepen or complicate their significations, towards a visual lexicon that helps me to locate myself, if only momentarily, within the chaos of our times. Most recently, I’ve been collaborating with materials such as copper, clay, and woven fabric to create sculptures and installations that reach, spill, and sprawl through their contiguity with photographic images, language, and space. I do it all through a love ethic, bolstered by our collective longing for something more.
From 2024-2026 I will be pursuing my MFA in Sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI. This pursuit comes after eight years spent in the Bay Area, where I earned my BFA from California College of the Arts with a concentration in Ceramics. I look forward to deepening my work and will continue to post updates here on my website and more frequently through my newsletter, which you can sign up for below. As always, e-mail is the best way to reach me. Thanks for being here, more to come soon <3.
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e-mail: tracy.mary.ren@gmail.com
instagram: @t_r_a_c_y__r_e_n