Renee Podunovich is a poet, author and artist
I am an artist, photographer, and a poet. The Southwest US high desert is my artistic heart’s home. Here, immeasurable landscapes are full of dramatic seasonal movement and mutability. Interwoven histories across deep-time create a rich creative palette. It is a land of complex ecosystems and cultures, and I hope to share the voice of this layered intersection where lessons from my deeply personal journey and the living voice of the land and its elements come together to sing.
My words and images are infused with a dash of magical realism grounded in imagery from the natural world. I love playing with light, contrast, scale and perspective, from the small, vulnerable human body in vast landscapes to images that celebrate small things up close. Whether the content is through poetry, personal essays, self-portraiture, landscapes, or collages, I am interested in the concepts of illumination, expanded awareness, and conversations with the unconscious while paying attention to being grounded in the senses on the Earth. It is a reciprocal, ongoing conversation with place.
I am interested in the creative process as a way to transcend a constricted sense of self and reconnect to a natural intelligence often lost in layers of conditioning and the busy pace of the daily grind. Through my art, I look at how we can deepen a more profound personal knowing and more extensive global awareness.
Writing
Renee Podunovich's visions are transparent panes allowing the reader the warmth and light of a larger view. She returns from journeys beyond the daily world with medicine which explodes in us 'with no limits, other than the filter of our hearts'. Her passionate words form conduits through which we can meet our higher selves."
-Cynthia West, author
ART
Renee thrives in a multifaceted practice; skilled in printmaking, photography, and collage, she utilizes traditional and modern techniques. From cyanotype and alternative printing processes to analog and digital collages, her work engages light, contrast, scale, and perspective to explore the concepts of illumination, expanded awareness, and conversations with the unconscious while paying attention to being grounded in the senses on the Earth. Her subjects range from the vastness of landscapes dwarfing the human form to intimate close-ups celebrating the beauty of the small and ordinary.
Featured content
FEATURED POEM
Dream Wings
Tea-Toned Cyanotype Print of Original Photo
on Strathmore 100% Rag
by Renee Podunovich © 2023
Dream Flight
“i just want to pull the linchpin.”
.she says.
as if bits would ever stop falling,
once they start to come apart.
raven caw cracks dawn.
.she takes flight.
keeps landing
in the same nest of storylines
tatted together
with a beak full of
string&twigs&the need for
open space.
things grow: they fly away
.she is left with habits.
beneath them (a witness)
her own compassion — featherwinds.
-Renee Podunovich, 2023
First published in Scrittura, 2021
Note: This poem was made into a small artist's book and can be purchased at the retail space at Mancos Common Press. I printed the text on a C&P platen press. The book also includes impression prints of botanicals and two cyanotype prints. It is a limited edition run of 25 books.
I am thrilled that Analog Forever Magazine editor Lisa Toboz chose my cyanotype image, “Chicago Fog,” as a finalist for The Top 40 Analog Photographs of 2023.