Rene West is at the white board, dry erase marker in hand. The words “Road Trip” stand alone on a field of white.
It is West’s three-hour photo digital imaging lab. The class is talking “theme.”
The students are about to embark on their own projects, and West is nudging them along on their journey. They pick apart the concept of a road trip, its iconography and its details until more black markings wash the bottom of the board.
Now they’re off to labor over their own ideas that will showcase their imagination and creativity.
West is called across the hall to her office, where a student wants to talk to her.
She sits comfortably behind her desk and tells the student to sit “over here or over there, wherever you want to sit.” She folds her hands on the desk and leans forward. Her long, dark hair falls over her shoulders, brushing her hands.
Behind her is a large photograph that looks like a 48-inch screen with an image burned through. It’s crepe myrtle exposed on paper by sunlight.
It’s the story of a time in West’s life, over a span of three or four summers, when she lived in a house making photograms on the front sidewalk. She is full of stories captured in photography, in art and in her songs.
West is a storyteller. There never needed to be a transition to teacher from artist/singer/songwriter. West always was a teacher through her storytelling.
“I never would have thought I would be a teacher,” she said. Originally from Kansas, West has played music and made collages her whole life. She received a guitar when she was 12 and started writing her own songs.
She had kept her job at an academic photo lab at night while she was doing commercial work, and “I found that I really loved teaching,“ she said.
Someone then pointed out to her that teaching came naturally. Now, she is a photography instructor in AC’s photography technology department.
West uses her past experiences to help students tell their own stories. She allows them to see the imagery in their own surroundings.
“Helping young artists evolve. Helping them begin to develop that confidence in their own ideas and their own maturity as an artist,” West said. She teaches her students that it’s about their ideas and inspirations.
In West’s own art, it’s all about narratives in songwriting, singing and mixed media photography, as in her show, “Ephemera,” where “digital imaging is blended with historical photographic processes, mixed media, book arts and assemblage,” she wrote in her blog.
“I seek to tell stories about our collective past through the fragments left behind.”
There also is her collection, “1929,” the literal story of a woman named Bob who kept a scrapbook in 1929.
West found her overstuffed scrapbook at a flea market and created montages in PhotoShop telling a story of Bob’s life in 1929 using the photos, handwriting and ephemera.
West wrote, “I like objects that reveal on the surface the journey of their existence.”
Then there are the songs that tell more complex stories about blue-collar life, growing up and feeling hopeless.
Some stories are from her own life, and some are inspirations from outside sources such as news stories and friends. All of West’s stories are gritty and real.
In his review of West’s 2007 album, This Town, for Americana UK, a music review site for United Kingdom audiences who are seeking great American folk/blues/independent music, critic David Cowling wrote, “West does a good job of not sentimentalizing or glorifying. These are facts of life; no mythology, just reportage.”
West will tell you that the Internet has done a lot for independent-label musicians and that she suspects it will start to help other artists as well.
West has done several art shows and two albums, and she continues to work on more.
“I’ve been writing a lot lately, so there’s new stuff coming,” she said.
There’s some time between the age of 12 and now, a journey between Kansas and Texas.
“I moved to Texas,” Wesr says, then trails off. She allows for a long pause that brings about a slight, coy smile, and her eyes glaze, “awhile back. I had a lot of friends in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.”
There was a story in that pause. Perhaps one day West will tell it.
For more on West and to view her work, visit her Web site at www.renewest.net.
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