The Bridge #14, Renee Bott

Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Renée Bott has always made and worked in art. Renée worked in fine art print publishing for over 30 years. For the past twenty years, Renée was a founding partner and Master Printer of Paulson Bott Press, a fine print atelier located in Berkeley, California. Here she worked with luminary artists such as Martin Puryear, Kerry James Marshall and Tauba Auerbach. Renée specialized in facilitating the creation of complex and colorful intaglio prints within a traditionally black and white medium. Paulson Bott Press has published over 500 editions, working with many artists. In 2016, the archive of Paulson Bott Press was acquired by the de Young Museum in San Francisco. 

In the last several years Bott has stepped back from printmaking to turn her attention fulltime to her own work.  Book pages provide the underlying armature overlaid by the minute and detailed lines found in etchings and engravings from the 17th century. She collects her source materials from museums, antique print dealers, and private collections. She photographs the prints and uses photoshop to digitally modify the images, which serve as general outlines for her compositions which she renders with paint and ink upon the surface of the book pages.

The text for the two Worlds Apart works is from the book: The Complete Works by Edgar Allen Poe. The background circular images used as a back drop for both are based on an ancient star chart Bott found depicting the northern and southern hemispheres at the four equinoxes.

The tree is sourced from the intricate lines found in a 1600 Italian etching. “The work speaks to me about how we are divided in time, between the past and the future,” says the artist.

“The stars are permanent, but we are fugitive.”

Regarding the Shelter in Place, the artist says, “I'm a social person, so the Shelter in Place quarantine definitely poses a challenge for me. I am trying to stay positive, thinking about how this time serves as an incentive to really focus on my artwork. There have been long hours in my tiny studio, thinking about how we are all inter-connected. This interconnection is essential for our survival, and it is what makes our lives meaningful. I hope to use these ideas as inspiration for my next body of work.”