Arteles Catalogue 2023-2020

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2023
Rachel Rinker
USA
rachelrinker.wixsite.com/artist
About
Rachel uses painting, drawing, collage and printmaking to
explore notions of memory, archive and entropy as they
process their states of being over time. As they experience
human needs for connection and organizational structures,
they tangibly unfold them during the creation of new work.
Periods of rest are paramount to balance energetic bursts of
rhythmic, painterly movements and the unfurling of visually
stimulating environments full of layered history and human
connection.
Typically drawn to themes of accumulation and upcycling
in their visual art practice as instinct, necessity, and as a
sustainable approach to art making, Rachel is excited to find
themselves amongst the spaciousness of silence to discover
whether the clutter may cease or sustain their creative
process. During their time at Arteles, they are open to the
fall-out, the re-discovery, the finding of new quietly powerful
somatic pathways.
What Happened?
Gloriously swollen, I’ve never more distinctly experienced
the powerful cyclical period of one month. I came to this
experience with as few tangible expectations of myself as
possible. Silence. Awareness. Existence. was a powerful
thread to hold our month together… social weeks punctuated
by silent weekends allowed the ebb and flow of creativity
to take hold at all the right times. I had freedom to simply
exist in my self, establish a meditation practice, listen to
the radiators hiss, develop community with an amazing and
diverse group of creatives, traipse through the snow, learn
how to make bread, and share a part of myself in a lush and
welcoming space. I emptied out from the very beginning
to almost a shell of myself, questioned how I could then
possibly relate to the world if I’m empty? But, through time, I
remembered myself - my body, my being - that I am the world
and the world is me - and this helped maintain the rest of
my journey as I meandered through exploring new avenues
of creativity for the simple sake of play, experiment, and a
release of expectations to “produce.” Nonetheless, I did
complete six+ intimate abstract landscapes (heartscapes?)
that transformed over the month’s time from clean, gessoed
substrates, to watercolor studies, to upcycled collages, to
gouache playgrounds, where these scenes emerged to
fruition. It was a reconciling with my established creative
practice, while letting the experience of the swollen month’s
cycle gently guide me with newfound awareness and intent.