Patrick Renner

“There is a certain beauty in the tarnished surface of the urban landscape. The residue of wear is on most everything we encounter in our daily trajectory through this city, like any other. It changes constantly with the movement of the inhabitants and continues to tell an evolving tale. At some point I became very interested in the encrusted surfaces of poles and messages boards that had been the site of countless postings, now gone. A visual correlation between the pattern of nails and staples on the poles, and the spindle in a music box, prompted an investigation into whether or not sound could be harvested from this open source.What would each pole say, or sing, contingent upon the people who’d used them as a means of communication? TheFrankenstein method of building led to a conglomeration of metal, pulleys, bearings, bicycle parts, sewing needles, trial and error, a music box comb, and a piano cadaver that manages to eek out some kind of sound. My intention is to sample sound from poles throughout Houston, and later other cities, broadcasting impromptu concerts to unwitting passers-by.”

Patrick Renner is a fourth-generation Houstonian. He left for a few years to get his BFA at theKansas City Art Institute and then his MFA at the New York State College of Ceramics at AlfredUniversity. Afterward he came back to the warm, humid embrace of Houston to make art.Patrick teaches sculpture at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (where he was once also a fresh-faced student) and is a mentor for Blaffer Gallery’s Young ArtistsApprenticeship Program.He has recently completed residencies at Sculpture Space in Utica,New York, and AS220 in Providence, RI.Additionally, he has a number of collaborative projects with other artists in various states in the works.He is looking forward to the renovation and move to a new live/work space north of the Heights.