Renn Reed of Osceola is the Clarke Area Arts Council (CAAC) artist of the month for March and April; her work is currently on display at Lakeside Hotel Casino. Her show includes a variety of photographs and artwork, capturing just some of a long career as an artist and filmmaker.
An artist’s reception will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday, March 9 in the casino events center lobby.
Art beginnings
Reed grew up in Hollywood, California, and when not in school, spent a lot of her childhood with her maternal grandparents, who worked with and were good friends with several well-known names within the film industry. This nurtured an early love for the arts, and began her earliest forms of drawing.
“Like every kid, I used crayons,” said Reed of her early forays into art.
As she progressed in skill, Reed began working with oils, preferring them to other mediums.
After a move to the San Francisco Bay area, she studied with a lady who did mostly subjects of females, and Reed found she enjoyed using people as subjects for her art over still life.
“I like people - I think everyone has a story,” said Reed .
She branched out to landscapes, finding a passion for nature and animals, and taking time to put thought into each piece she created.
Reed began selling her artwork at age 10, won a competition in high school through a local art museum, and studied art in college, where she went straight to creating portraits for her art class. She also formed her first company, Rennditions, at age 16.
Reed has had art shows all over the world, including art on display at the Oakland Museum of Art in California, and internationally in El Salvador, Guatemala, parts of Mexico, and a European tour in 2000-01 that included a display in Barcelona, Spain. Her shows feature a mix of artwork and photography, the latter of which she said she’d always been involved in, with her maternal grandfather having been a photographer with the army during World War I; Reed and her husband, Mark Barth, still have her grandfather’s portable enlarger.
Work in one creative field for Reed soon led into another - independent film making.
Film making
“It was a very logical thing for us to gravitate into film making, given our backgrounds and our creative journeys,” said Reed of she and her husband’s film making venture, which comes from their work in the film making industry.
As a child, Reed was an extra in the Hitchcock film “The Birds,” and Barth has also worked in film and television. Both appeared in the 2007 film “National Treasure: Book of Secrets,” with Reed originally slated to have a speaking role that had to be cut due to time constraints.
Currently, the couple are working on a reboot of their movie franchise, “Lost Angels,” that will have five parts when completed - “The Discovery,” “United,” ‘Uncharted Territory” and “The Alliance” - with the fifth one going through what is called “treatment,” which is a synopsis of a film or project.
“Lost Angles [The Discovery]” was shot in 2001 in South Dakota, and Reed and Barth are now working on upgrading the footage; part of the second film were filmed around Woodburn. The trailer for “Lost Angles [The Discovery]” can be found at liquidiceent.com. The films are described as action-adventure-drama-scifi.
Due to her work in the film making industry, Reed was invited to form a school of film making in South Dakota, however, that opportunity did not come to fruition.
With Reed’s background, it makes her one of the more unique artists to be featured as the CAAC’s artist of the month.
“She’s different from most of the artists we’ve had, because of her background and because she’s worked on movies and been in the industry. [She’s] done shows all over,,” said Mary Ellen Kimball of the CAAC.
In addition to art and films, Reed has also worked as a designer in Taiwan, as an interpreter, government negotiator and consultant in China, and as a freelancer for the Associated Press. She and Barth moved to Osceola when his job as an Assets Protection manger for Walmart, a position taken after they’ve moved to South Dakota to care for his mother, transferred him to Creston and Indianola. Prior to Osceola, they lived in Creston.
Display
Reed’s display at Lakeside Hotel Casino features a variety of photos with most taken in Iowa in and around Clarke County. There are also some from Lucas and Union counties, as well as South Dakota and China. She has titled the exhibit “Lake Moods - Sunset stories.”
All of the photos are spontaneous, not staged. There are many that feature wildlife, and several of Osceola’s Grade Lake both during the day and at sunset. Grade Lake is of particular interest to Reed, as she finds the lake is not ordinary, and wants to illustrate that.
All are welcome to attend her artist reception. Reed will be on hand to talk with, there will be a craft station for children, and a print of an original work will be given to one lucky winner who attends.
“I want people to feel welcome,” said Reed, who is excited for her first show since her European tour.