Renee van der Stelt’s richly-detailed drawings and paper sculpture are interpretations of human interactions with the environment. Informed by pre-existing data—maps of natural resources, geographical surveys, and symbolic distinctions such as borders and lines of latitude—van der Stelt abstracts and overlaps the data as a means to see how these systems work together. While informed by hard data, there is also a transformative quality to van der Stelt’s work in which rivers and gas lines, borders and power lines flow together to form a glittery array of dots and patterns that are both delicate and graceful, and it is here the data blurs and yields to the beauty of the abstracted form. The final result is a blending of art and science, an exploration of the ways in which three-dimensional space is represented with its corresponding biases and limitations.

Renee van der Stelt was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and grew up in Ontario and Iowa. She received a Master’s degree in Art History in 1990 and a MFA degree in Drawing from the University of Iowa in 1993. Now living in Baltimore, Maryland, she exhibits nationally in solo and group exhibitions. She has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the City of Baltimore, and the Maryland State Arts Council. She was an artist-in-residence at the historic MacDowell Colony in 2008. Her work is included in the Drawing Center’s Artist Registry, NY.

This exhibition is presented in partnership with the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program and the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art. For more information on these programs, please visit their websites at: www.rair.org and www.roswellamoca.org.

For additional information on this exhibition, please visit the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program's site.