Artist Statement

In 2014, I was fortunate enough to spend three months at the Kohler factory in Wisconsin as part of the Kohler Arts in Industry Residency. I can only describe the experience as magical- but with the caveat of grueling hard work, accompanied by mandatory steel-toed shoes, dust masks and continual eye protection-still-it was magical.

Le Jardin de la Patisserie (The Pastry Garden), was inspired by my visits to Paris and by all the pretty macarons, tarts, cakes and deserts I discovered there. Jardin was created entirely at Kohler factory from slip casting. I used pastry and Jell-o tins, both new and vintage, to make plaster molds, which I then used to cast the parts. My idea was to make a walk through, floor garden of bright, candy colored ceramic parts that referenced pastries and could be stacked and arranged in different ways every time it was installed.

In all, I made over 900 parts while I was there, using base glazes that Kohler supplied and to which I added various ceramic stains. Kohler also provided discarded ceramic decals, ones they no longer used and ones that I accepted readily, cutting them up and using them experimentally.

In all, I sent back 50 boxes of work, and Jardin remains ever evolving, taking on new formations and silhouettes with each installation, always aiming for a sense of joy and surprise.

Created in the Arts/Industry residency program, John Michael Kohler Arts Center/Kohler Company.

Artist Biography

Lee Renninger is an autodidact and Mississippi based, installation artist working primarily in porcelain. Her conceptual focus is on the personal bringing form to questions about both our internal and external states.

Exhibition venues include the Museum of Arts and Design, the Mint Museum, the Shepparton Art Museum, and the Mississippi Museum of Art.

Awards include: a Pollock-Krasner Grant, and a Jane Crater Hiatt Fellowship.

She has been an artist-in-residence at the Kohler Company in Wisconsin, the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, the McColl Center for Art and Innovation in North Carolina and the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans.

Commissions include works for the Potawatomi Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, French Quarter Hiatt Hotel in New Orleans, and the St. Regis Hotel in Atlanta.

Her work was most recently published in Picturing Mississippi 1817 – 2017: Land of Plenty, Pain, and Promise by the Mississippi Museum of Art, The Ceramics Bible by Louisa Taylor, and Contemporary Ceramics by Emmanuel Cooper.

It is held in both public and private collections including those of Fidelity Investments, Ally Bank, Kohler Company, the Mississippi Museum of Art, and the Shepparton Art Museum.

@leerenninger

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