RACHEL BEER: ROOTING IN THE RUPTURE

ON VIEW OCTOBER 27, 2023 – NOVEMBER 17, 2023

As part of Lawrence Print Week and opening on Final Friday, October 27th, Wonder Gallery returns with an exhibition of work from the Lawrence Art Center’s current printmaking artist-in-residence, Rachel Beer. Join us for a reception with the artist from 5-9pm during the Print Week Gallery Crawl or on Saturday, October 28th for our Wazygoose. Both evenings will feature a new interactive Wonder Fair print experience: Dig Your Costume: Mask Mayhem! with Lawrence’s spookiest artist-in-residence, Anne Luben. For this special event, Anne has designed several different interchangeable print blocks and attendees will have the chance to play a game of facial feature roulette in order to build and print their own Halloween masks on our antique proofing press. Freshly dug and printed Masks will be $10: both an affordable edition and unique costume choice!

Artist Statement

My current practice involves taking daily walks through my neighborhood as a way of maintaining a relationship with the place and the body in which I live. While walking, I often catch myself becoming easily distracted by cycles of numbness and despair. Yet sooner or later I stumble upon a crack in the pavement that stops me in my tracks and reminds me of the regenerative potential buried inches beneath the unlivable surface. In pausing to appreciate these small lively spaces that surround me, I am also learning to recognize the hidden pockets of liveliness that reside within me.

Many of the “weedy” plants that live in these cracks are seen as disposable troublemakers. They are deemed insignificant and fragile despite their ability to make a home in damaged landscapes. Inspired by their disobedient tenderness, I am learning to take root in my own sick soil rather than paving over it. Navigating the world in a body disabled by invisible illness and pain has taught me that there is a relationship between the degradation of both my internal and external environments. The images I create inhabit this transitional zone. My work questions: How have I internalized the rigid structures that surround me? How can I nurture the cracks that are beginning to form?

The colors and forms that I depict are informed by my field research of spontaneous urban vegetation as well as by medical images taken within my own body. By combining aerial perspectives at close proximity with abstracted imagery of the body, my work not only guides the viewers’ gaze back down to the ground, but also inwards to the spaces of liveliness they may have overlooked within themselves. I usually find that these spaces whisper and hum rather than loudly proclaiming their presence. Often it is only when I patiently observe that I am able to hear their quiet song. To reflect this secretive nature, I retain a muted translucency to my color palette and a delicate sensitivity to my mark-making.

Through the intricate processes of drawing and printmaking, I am deepening my attentive gaze. I begin by printing with woodblocks, stencils, and trace monotype techniques in a playful manner that reflects the spontaneous growth patterns of urban plants and the cracks that they inhabit. I work back and forth with several images at a time, gradually building up luminous layers of ink. I then respond to these compositions by integrating graphite drawings to bring the softest details forth from the paper. As a result of these delicate colors and marks, the viewer is drawn in and perhaps even surprised by the sprouting details they encounter upon looking closely. In a world of concrete, my work sends out tendrils of graphite and ink that search for the ruptures where sickness can be held and gentler ways of living can emerge.

Rachel Beer

Rachel Beer is a visual artist based in the Midwest. She received her BFA in drawing and printmaking from the University of Oklahoma in May of 2019. She graduated with her MFA in printmaking from Northern Illinois University in May of 2023 and was recently selected as the 2023/2024 Printmaking Artist in Residence at the Lawrence Arts Center in Kansas. Her practice is founded in a love of drawing, and she extends this love into the mediums of printmaking by combining the lively qualities of woodblock and monotype printing with the delicacy of graphite, intaglio, and lithography. Influenced by her experiences navigating invisible illness, Rachel’s work explores the connections between her internal and external ecosystems and draws attention to the often-overlooked pockets of liveliness that exist within these environments.

Artist website: rachelabeer.myportfolio.com
Instagram: @rachelbeerprints