Couture & Hopkins Present the First Exhibitions of the Fall Season

The Nightingale Gallery of Eastern Oregon University is pleased open our fall season with the presentation of work by two Oregon Artists. To the Rumored Garden will present a body of work by Renee Couture in our main gallery space. In our small front gallery space Carolyn Hopkins will present her mixed-media installation, Cascade.

The exhibition opens Friday, October 4 and coincides with La Grande’s new First Friday Artwalk. There will be a reception from 6-8pm that evening in the gallery located in Loso Hall.  The show will run through Friday, October 25. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 11am to 4pm.

Renee Couture’s work examines the complex relationships between capitalism, community, and the environment.  Through the lens of bio-regional ethics and postmodern environmentalism, her work considers the interdependence between people and the environment in a quest to uncover the modern connection and disconnection people have to their surrounding landscape.

Primarily in the form of sculpture, photography and installation, Couture’s work tends to be more conceptual in nature. She is most attracted to materials that come from daily activities—ubiquitous materials that become invisible, forgotten or thrown away.

Couture graduated from Buena Vista University with a BA in Studio Art and Spanish in 1999. She spent the next four years traveling throughout the United States and South America. She moved to Oregon in 2004 after completing Peace Corps service. She earned her MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, VT, in 2010. She exhibits her work nationally and resides in Glide, Oregon.

Carolyn Hopkins’ work pulls the wild and unfamiliar into the domestic realm. Through combining items, materials, and imagery from culturally oppositional territories she creates a new hybrid space which allows for a reconsideration of the familiar. Her work questions the conventional cultural roles of the feminine and masculine as well as the tamed and untamed and creates moments from which to reflect on the world in which we live.

Carolyn Hopkins lives and works in Portland. She received an MFA in Sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2011, and a BFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2006. In addition to her studio practice Carolyn is the founder of Homeschool, a non-traditional venue for community based projects and events run primarily out of her home and backyard. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has been published in Sculpture Magazine.

In conjunction with the exhibition Carolyn Hopkins will present a public talk about her work on Tuesday, October 1 at 7pm in Huber Auditorium in Badgely Hall and on Wednesday, October 2Renee Couture will talk about her work at 6pm also in Huber Auditorium in Badgely Hall. The presentations are, as always, free and open to the public.

“Couture and Hopkins’ each examine the complexity of our world through their highly engaging works,” said Cory Peeke, Nightingale Gallery Director.  “Exhibit visitors are presented with an exhibition of compelling objects and installation that ask us  reflect on and reconsider the familiar.  The Nightingale Gallery is pleased to bring the work of these two exciting western Oregon artists to the attention of the eastern Oregon community.”

The Nightingale Gallery is located in Loso Hall on the campus of Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, OR.  Gallery hours are Monday-Friday 11AM-4PM.  For more information please visit our website: www.eou.edu/art/ or follow us on Facebook.