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.

SPECIAL EVENT: Gallery Talk with Renee Piechocki, Saturday, August 20, 2022 from 1-2pm. Free!

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 , and 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:

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

The exhibition is free and everyone is welcome. Large-print labels are available upon request at the attendant's desk. Accessible bathrooms. The gallery is one block away from the Wood Street T Station and close bus stops include the G2, G3, G31, 81, 82, 83, 77, 11, 15, 6, and 1.

820 Liberty Avenue is one of many galleries managed by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Be sure to check out other exhibitions nearby https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visual-arts/galleries.