About the Artist

Renee is a Los Angeles native, which has provided her with a cockroach-like ability to thrive under brutal conditions.  She briefly moved to San Diego to attend college at the University of California, San Diego, and then pursued a Master’s degree at San Diego State, graduating with high honors from both institutions.  Her chosen fields of study were animal cognition and the nature of consciousness, leading to several years of working with dolphins in captivity and then two years of field research with wild killer whales.  Renee returned to Los Angeles after learning (the “hard way”) that the research she wanted to do as a PhD candidate would not be funded in the foreseeable future.

       Alas, Renee was not independently wealthy, and was forced to take on work in the advertising sector as a sculptor and pattern designer for a company that made giant inflatable versions of cartoon characters, and sports and television celebrities, as well as other animals.  Shortly after finishing a project that installed a 65 foot inflatable King Kong on the Empire State Building, Renee decided there was nowhere to go but down, leading her to choose a career in film.

       For over fifteen years, she worked in Los Angeles and on location around this great country of ours in all areas of the art department, completing more than thirty films, as well as a stint on the television series The Wonder Years as their charge scenic.  As detailed elsewhere on this site (see “Artist Resume, here), Renee has developed a wide variety of skills, including scenic art, sculpture, foam and RTV casting and mold-making, miniatures and model-making, plastering, set decorating, and art directing, as well as working on-set as either set dresser/continuity, props, or standby painter.  Her extensive art department background led to her most recent position as the production designer on the upcoming feature film Conversations with God.

       Renee is familiar with on-set etiquette, has worked under high stress, close deadlines, and miniscule budgets (as well as monstrously huge ones).  Along the way, she has developed her capacity for calm and, according to unnamed sources, a good sense of humor.   It should be reassuring to note that after many years of being under the gun, Renee has yet to be shot.

       While Renee fancies herself a talented but still emerging writer who must submit to working in film as a day job for survival purposes, if she is honest with herself (and who is, really?), she might admit that she is very passionate about film.  Indeed, if she were legally required to tell the truth—if she were on the witness stand for some important, landmark trial, for example, she would confess that she truly loves the artistry and challenge involved in transforming a script and the director’s or producers’ vision into a brilliant reality on the silver screen.

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