We were lucky to catch up with Rachel Sydlowski recently and have shared our conversation below.
Rachel , appreciate you joining us today. What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?
Many, years ago I had just moved to New York City and was working three different jobs. One of the jobs was teaching wheel throwing at a ceramics studio. The owner gave me a key to the studio so I could use the space after classes ended in the evening (an immense kindness). I wanted to go to the ceramics studio but didn’t have enough money to take the train home. I was standing in the station kind of weighing my options. Should I not go, should I walk back at night, or stay in the studio all night and walk back in the morning? A stranger came up to me at that exact moment and asked if I wanted the last two days on their unlimited MetroCard since they were leaving town. It was a small gesture that completely changed my outlook. Kindness generates more kindness, even small gestures can have a big impact. Friends have helped me with elaborate installations when I couldn’t pay them or lent tools and come to openings when they had other things to do. The flip side to this is generosity. Be generous, write your friend’s artist statement, help with that installation, give rides, lend your skills, and finally just show up for people.
Rachel , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
The images and installations I create are fantastical spaces where I act as architect, designer, engineer and project manager. Research focusing on gardens, natural landscapes, and architecture is as much about creating myths as they are about questioning who owns the land, who can preserve it, who can occupy it, and for how long. Constructing landscapes from ephemeral materials traces the rise and fall of the amassing of wealth and property – ultimately collecting reaches a zenith becoming unmanageable. The aftermath results in a deaccessioning or a fall to ruin. Spaces of grandeur are articulated through print media and digital means depicting a psychedelic chimera of antiquity and nature, a fever dream of landscaped grand hotels, private estates, and planned gardens.
I primarily use scientific collections, museum open-access archives, and auction catalogs to collect source material. This process, both analog and digital, includes transforming incomplete images, adding or enhancing degraded images, and using digital collage systems to create a new image from a sparsity of information. Within this process is the freedom to become a mythmaker and fabulist, taking one image, and recontextualizing it away from provenance, collections, museum archives, or ownership. Artworks are further prioritized for the people through translation into print media, reproducible, modular, and compactable, and are ready to adapt to any space and purpose.
In creating mythical landscapes, hyper-saturated colors, and dense overgrown plantings address a post-pastoral existence. I translate garden statuary, architecture, plants, and animals in hyper-saturated colors and use pattern and repetition to conjure the impossible fleeting slipstream of the American landscape, a reckoning of its promise, limitations, and mythology.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
The long play. Things aren’t immediate and sometimes a “no” is just a no for now. The world is a wildly unpredictable place and there have been times when opportunities passed or an application was rejected but it led to something else or the conversation opened back up for whatever reason. In one instance I applied to an opportunity with a small group of artists as a collective and we were not selected. I continued to make installations and exhibit. Several years later the organization reached out to me and offered me a similar opportunity. Sometimes things come back around but never in the way you anticipate. While it’s not reasonable to get every opportunity you apply for I think everyone reading this can empathize with the disappointment of rejection after putting time and effort into an application. The more positive and rational way to look at it is that the more applications I complete the better I get at it and even if I am rejected, someone is looking at your images and reading your responses.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
There is a lot of problem-solving as a creative and it pushes me to reach out to new people. Not every interaction forges a friendship or is deeply meaningful, but my circle of friends and acquaintances is a dazzling array of humans who each have varied professions, creative fields, or areas of expertise. In the past month I’ve reached out to several artists to include in a curatorial project to whom I had little or no connection, I also researched and used a powder coating service, a furniture restorer, and an electrician, just to name a few. There is no job description for getting projects together. Every single endeavor pushes you into unchartered waters.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rachelsydlowski.com/
- Instagram: @rachelsyd