Pet Portraits For My Friend Jess

I am reaching out today on behalf of my dear friend Jessica Poor.  Today happens to be her birthday, and in her honor I have created a Go Fund Me account to raise funds for her as she faces homelessness and continues to struggle with disability and sever physical and mental health issues.

Jessica has helped me and so many others in countless ways.  Always willing to help, when my mom was in hospice, Jess offered me an affordable place to live and emotional support that helped carry me through this difficult time.  Help me pay her back for all of her kindness and generosity!

I am offering custom pet portraits (at 3 price-points) as rewards for your donations--above is a display of the process used to create this full color portrait of Ike and Weezie, my friend Kyle Alexander's adorable babies.  Using the commercial printing CMYK palette and process, I hand stamp each layer in order from yellow, magenta, cyan then black, making for an impressionistic portrait using hand-carved diamond-shaped stamps and archival ink on cotton paper.

The most affordable price-point will earn you a high quality print of this same image--for $25!

I am really excited to draw your fur-babies for a good cause! Please read on and consider donating--every little bit counts.

With Gratitude,

Rachel

Time-Lapse: Install at Darling Press

My install at Darling Press was a success! I'm getting faster at installing these large-scale grid works.


Give Up The Queen And Nobody Gets Hurt was completed in 2014 using only my Sears Citation II manual italic typewriter and 74 five-inch squares of paper.  It's displayed by placing thumbtacks in the wall and tiny magnets to attach the paper in place. 


I'm so thrilled to share this piece alongside my latest typewriter drawings as Artist of the Month at Darling Press in February!  If you are in Portland, please join us for the opening reception First Friday, February 5 from 7-10pm.  There will be wine and snacks as well as live music from the Miley Cyrus Mind Control Quartet! Hope to see you there!

Artist Of The Month @ Darling Press

Please join us at the Darling Press Studio on first Friday, February 5th from 7-10pm--just two weeks away--to celebrate my latest typewriter drawings on view for the month. We can nerd out about beautiful old machinery while surrounded by it.

Stay tuned for more details on the Facebook invite page!

Hope to see you there!

Commission: The Tightrope Walker

At the end of 2015, I had the honor of making a typewriter-drawing for my very first collector in Portland.  In 2009, Michael bought an etching of mine from a group show at Backspace (RIP)--my first show in town--alongside Troy Briggs, Adam Stacey and Anthony Hix. That was probably one of the last prints I pulled from the MIAD print shop.  I covet and romanticize this space and can recreate the sensual-landscape of wonderfully toxic odors, each differing from the litho-, to the -intaglio to the -screen room. Let's gaze listlessly out of a window.

The Tightrope Walker, 2015
8 x 14 inches, typewritten ink on paper

The Tightrope Walker was a fun challenge--working smaller than ever before, figure-wise.  The tightrope walker herself is only 4.5 inches tall.  It was exciting and delightfully nerve-wracking to force myself to work in an impressionist way--each mark a gamble. I am grateful for having abandoned my purist tendencies with typewriter-drawing awhile back, and employed an eraser.  Everything is a drawing tool.

It was fabulous to make a piece for such an imaginative person--we had a long back-and-forth of planning for the feeling and look of the piece.  It was originally going to be a thoughtful gift for his wife, but Michael admitted when we exchanged that it became mainly for himself... Self-gifts are important.

There was another contrast between this piece and the work I make for myself.  I am a coward with words and have never considered incorporating text in my own work. I realize this may sound counterintuitive or wasteful (I'm using a typewriter all wrong!), but I really just enjoy using the typewriter as a straightforward drawing tool--using apostrophes and asterisks for fine lines and percentages and pounds for shading or to make velvet black, without incorporating subtext.  Plus, there are people like Leslie Nichols using the same tool to create incredible things utilizing text and meaning and order in such an overwhelmingly beautiful way.  Yes, a hero of mine. Michael had asked me to incorporate a quote from Ernest Becker's book The Denial Of Death, as a secret message, not necessarily detectable, "like a little hidden Easter egg for [himself]". What a lovely project. Thanks Michael!