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In 2016, while walking in the outdoors on a thousand-acre pasture in Banner, Wyoming, Renee decided to change her life and untether herself and further explore. It took a while. The artworks in Renee Piechocki’s exhibition Traveling Show are a multi-compilation of work including photographs, video, and books created during or in response to her travel journeys from 2018 throughout portions of the U.S., Pacific Northwest, and Montreal, Canada, and during 2019 while living abroad in Japan, New Zealand, Mauritius, Chile, and Ecuador.

Traveling Show features four distinct exhibition presentations: Walking: Finding, 2022; Turning In, 2019; A Liberation Abecedary, 2021, and As Far As I Can Go, 2022.

Walking: Finding, 2022 is an extensive photography collection of things Piechocki found on the ground. The artist culled through thousands of images and created an installation grid set on the gallery floor. Visitors can view and explore this exhibition as the artists invites us to find connections between beautiful, odd, frightening, confusing, and humorous photographs from all over the world.

Turning In, 2019 is a video that chronicles the life of the artist accompanied by a tumbleweed while shopping, bathing, driving, and doing laundry while slyly questioning her ability to engage intuition and creativity.

A Liberation Abecedary, 2021 features twenty-eight people who created scenes to express liberation with a tool of their choice. The tools are conceptual, physical, personal. Inspired by Martha Rosler’s video Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975 Piechocki’s A Liberation Abecedary, 2021 explores liberation through many points of view, initiating a conversation about liberation and how it is experienced.

A Liberation Abecedary, 2021 includes performances by the following collaborators, (alphabetical order by last name):

Edith Abeyta
Kahmeela Adams
Veronica Corpuz
Sheila Cuellar-Shaffer
Lucille Dabney
Christiane Dolores
Jill Foote-Hutton
Lareese Hall
Kate Hansen
Yona Harvey
Pantea Karimi
Tereneh Idia
Rachel Klipa
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Tiffany Ludwig
Jennifer McGregor
Carin Mincemoyer
Renee Piechocki
Katie Rearick
Rachel Saul Rearick
Renee Rosensteel
Diane Samuels
Norie Sato
Chloe Schwenke
Meg Thompson
Mary Tremone
Marcella Vanzo
Janet Zweig

As Far As I Can Go, 2022 is a collection of books that document a project she created at the start of her two-year journey. In each country, she selected places to take public transportation to the last stop, and exploring the surrounding areas by using her intuition and a predetermined set of rules as a guide. Gallery visitors will be able to take away a copy of a letterpress print of the framework she created for the project with them to document their own journeys.

Compass Roses: Maps by Artists Pittsburgh, 2020 is an exhibition that includes maps by twenty artists commissioned for Compass Roses: Maps by Artists Pittsburgh, a project produced by Nadine Wasserman and Renee Piechocki for the 2020 Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival. Visitors are welcome to collect the maps. More information about the project and downloadable versions of the maps are available at compassroses.art.

Compass Roses: Maps by Artists Pittsburgh, 2020 includes work by the following artists, (alphabetical order by last name):

Edith Abeyta, Risk Map (mask): May 1 - 7, 2020
Eric Boerer, A Historic Bike Tour of Radicals and Subversives in and around Downtown Pittsburgh
Nick Childers, Place and Time
Veronica Corpuz, Mapping the Portals of Her Spirit
Tuhin Das, After Traveling Half of the Globe
Christiane Dolores, Strange sound became a spiral
Fran Flaherty, Finding LOVE in Pittsburgh
Sherrie Flick, Mapping My Heart
Toby Fraley, Pittsburgh National Park
Steve Gurysh, A Hydrological Survey of Gerty’s Run
Yona Harvey, Northside Notation No.01 (COVID-19 Edition)
Jeffrey Krsul, Rainbow Roads: Allegheny County’s Color Belts
Carolina Loyola-Garcia, Pittsburgh Con Arte
Marcè Nixon-Washington, Fairywood: What happened to the fairies?
Renee Piechocki, Cry Me Three Rivers
Curtis Reaves, Talbot Towers
Diane Samuels, Under the Same Sky
James Simon, Simon Map
Shaun Slifer, The Land that Held the Lenape Settlement of Shannopintown
Sara Tang, Pittsburgh Bookstores

About Renee Piechocki

Renee Piechocki is an artist who prefers to work in many different settings, drawing on a range of creative practices: social practice, community arts, arts administration, photography, video, and drawing. As a result, she is sometimes an artist in the foreground as a creator, sometimes a collaborator, and sometimes an artist in the background as a public art consultant. No matter the role she is playing, Renee is passionate about developing projects and initiatives to engage artists and communities in the public realm. Renee founded Pittsburgh’s Office of Public Art in 2005 and served as director until 2017. She is now an independent public art consultant.

Renee Piechocki’s collaborative projects include Compass Roses: Maps by Artists with Nadine Wasserman (2020-present) that was commissioned for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s 2020 Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, and Trappings with Tiffany Ludwig (2001-2011). She frequently works with Jennifer McGregor on public art planning projects across the United States. She lives in Pittsburgh’s Northside where she has collaborated with friends to produce the Driveway of Doom every Halloween since 2009.