Reneé
Portrait with Nick Collura
Description: A portrait of a young man consists of three images of him blended into one another. One of them is him drawing on the portrait’s surface. On the left, there is a depiction of a little boy leaning on the central figure’s side.
Portrait with Zachary Maxwell Stertz
“I want them to see me as a good person who, if somebody needs to talk to about anything, they can just come up to me and talk to me. Like I said, I like to help people. I just want to be able to be there for someone if they need someone to talk to, because you know, not a lot of people always have someone to talk to. I guess I want people to see me as somebody who is easy to come up to talk to or easy just to come up to and be like, “Hey, what’s your name? Blah blah blah…” Because, like I said, I’ve been told before, people sometimes are nervous to come up and talk to me for anything. I guess it would probably be that.
[What stands out about me is] probably my artwork. I would say my art, because I started drawing when I was like seven or eight, and then started getting really serious about it when I turned twelve or thirteen. I feel like as I’ve gotten older, and me going to The Arts [Milwaukee High School of the Arts,] my art skills have gotten better and better, especially when I’m drawing people or animals and stuff - or basically anything. Because there was a point in time where, if I went to draw something, and I tried to draw it, I couldn’t. Now, I basically can. It may not be super realistic, but I can still get the grasp of what I was trying to draw. So, I feel like my art is what it is.
I feel like with me having kids - specifically a boy - would be to… I don’t know. I just want somebody where - I don’t know. I’ve heard when you’ve had a kid, it does something. Something amazing happens the first time you have a kid. I don’t know what that is, because I’ve never had a kid before, but I heard it’s something super, super special. And your whole world changes. I think that’s just really impactful, and I want to be able to experience it for myself and see what they’re really talking about. I can kind of get an idea, but I feel like you’re not really going to know until you actually experience it for yourself.
But my little brother - me and him just have this really strong bond. In the photoshoot, he had him come in, and he had me - my arm - on his chest and him looking up at me. So you can see him, but you couldn’t see me. But in the backdrop, it’s like me doing all these different things all composed into one thing. With him putting in my artwork, somehow.”
Milwaukee, 2018