There is a world wide phenomenon of transnational corporate culture, urban sprawl and global homogenization

inundating and annihilating ancient places, people, and traditions. The edges of this flood are in stark contrast to the natural world, forming an impact area with a fluid border and this border area is where I work.

I am also informed and inspired by the subtle yet persistent resistance to this flood by traditional cultures and Nature herself. The ancient ways and places may be broken up and seemingly crushed nowadays but they nevertheless survive as a rhizome - continuing to spread underground while influencing our world in profound and important ways.

I am reminded of the words of C.G. Jung: "When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilization, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost the sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains."

Bio

Robert Renfrow graduated as Salutatorian of his class from the Kansas City Art Institute with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography/Video in 1988. Renfrow was then awarded a Graduate Fellowship to attend the University of Arizona, receiving his MFA in Photography in 1991.

In 1994 he co-founded ARTIS, (Art Research Tours and International Studios), a non-profit organization dedicated to helping artists travel and study abroad and taught in Italy for many years.

Currently, Renfrow teaches photography and Photoshop at his studio in Tucson, Arizona as well as conduct photography workshops internationally. He was an artist-in-residence for the Arizona Commission on the Arts and is on the faculty of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum Art Institute. His artworks in both photography and video have been exhibited in Europe and throughout the USA.