Bio
Rachel is an interdisciplinary artist who produces work that feels like home, using hand dyed textiles, ceramics, and paint. She was raised in London and received her BA in Human Geography from the University of Sussex, Brighton. After moving to the United States to raise a family, she received her post-baccalaureate certificate from the San Francisco Arts Institute.
I treat color as a language which reaches far beyond words. My work is from the perspective of being a mother, of being at home a lot, of being outside of regular working society, of otherness. It explores that which is ineffable yet familiar, in the wider world and on the micro level. For my children each new day is filled with novelty and wonder. The world would be a better place if we could all return to this state of comfort and excitement. Pattern is a grasp at familiarity and reason through repetition. In my recent explorations of quilt making and fabric dyeing, I created and then cut up patterns, reforming them imperfectly in order to push the aforementioned dualities of novelty and familiarity into distortion, lostness and disorientation. I think a lot about what constitutes a place, as it is a very human thing to consider our surroundings as places. These cut up and re-sewn works have come to resemble broken flags. If a flag is supposed to represent the unity of a group of people or nation, would a broken flag be more accurate? Can a sense of unity ever actually be represented without silencing many and rewriting flaws as strengths?
Selected Work
