About Us / History
Triangle Woman Gallery presents the quirky, bizarre, and fun art of owner, Chris Rentzel, along with other artists.
The gallery's mission is to support artists whose work is quirky, or emerging/up-and-coming artists, or BIPOC artists, or LGBTQ+ artists.
Triangle Woman Gallery is best experienced in person.
History
The Triangle Woman character came to Chris Rentzel while he was in middle school living in Dallas, Texas. Every few weeks he used to quickly sketch a figure of her on the chalkboard before the teacher entered the classroom. Upon entering and then noticing the Triangle Woman character, the agitated teacher would slowly turn back towards the students, with beady eyes, and stare down each of them as if trying to catch the culprit. The secret was never revealed.
Years later, with Triangle Woman still in Chris’ head, he sent out daily emails to coworkers of a Triangle Woman cartoon accompanied with a bizarre “thought of the day”. This morphed into a series of short films using human actors to enact the strangeness. The phrase, "Hello, I'm fine," was first used in the short films as a way for Triangle Woman to save time when answering the phone.
Chris kept rolling with it and produced a feature film in 2008 called, The Many Strange Stories of Triangle Woman. It can be seen on-demand at TriangleWomanMovie.com.
Soon thereafter Chris discovered wonderful Portland, fell in love with it, and relocated. While sitting on his couch in September 2020, Triangle Woman pulled at him again—only this time she came in the form of a quirky art gallery.
Triangle Woman says that because of you, she now has a great following. She's forever grateful to be able to voice to you what she's been so trying to convey to the world but hasn't been able to until now.
She knows just how hard it was back in her school days
when she was trying so hard to come out of her shell.
How disturbing it must have been for her teachers.
How frustrating for her not to be able to talk about it.
But now her time has come! Now she can say those words that Triangle Woman has been saying in her thoughts all
these years.
Now you are free Triangle Woman!
Speak! Yes, speak your words of wisdom.