Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Raquel Mullins. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Raquel , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

One of the things that has propelled my practice along during seasons of life when time and attention are crunched has been collaborating with other artists who inspire me. I’ve found that community is immensely important, and engaging with other artists (both as an artist, teacher, and a curator) has nourished my life and practice immensely.

For the past several years, I have had the pleasure of participating in an Artist Collective with a handful of artists who all define their research and work’s focus to be driven by the domestic realm. In one way or another, we are all reflecting upon some meaning of home, belonging, or some memory of lived-in space. We collaborate to co-curate and exhibit with one another nationally, and provide one another with meaningful dialogue surrounding each other’s practices. Our members vary greatly in age, many of us are mothers, and we are all supporting one another from a distance in seasons of bounty and slowness in producing art objects. “Threshold” collective is growing this year and will be having our third exhibition since 2021 this October, 2024 at Wavelength Space in Chattanooga, TN.

“Threshhold” was spearheaded by my friend and colleague, Rachael Zur (Portland, OR). Rachael is a member of the artist-run space “Carnation Contemporary” in Portland, OR. In 2023 we co-curated an artist-run space exchange between Wavelength Space in Chattanooga, TN and Carnation. The exhibitions, “Between Spaces”, happened simultaneously in each gallery and many of the artists involved were all making work in response to notions of place. This project took months of planning, and so many moving parts, but has had aftershocks of influence for me (and I think many of the artists involved would say the same). The show created a bridge of sorts between our respective artistic communities (in the Pacific Northwest and in the Southeast) and we were able to generate meaningful conversations about similarities and differences between our particular cultural and geographical influences.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Raquel Mullins, and I am an artist, mother, curator, and art educator based in Chattanooga, TN. As an artist, I create mixed media drawings, paintings, and fiber based works based upon mothering, childhood, and domestic life in the American South. In 2019 my husband, Trey Mullins, and I founded art artist-run gallery space and recording studio venue called Wavelength Studios and Wavelength Space. After attending graduate school at SAIC in 2018, I was very inspired by my curatorial professors, mentors, and members of my cohort who have founded artist-run spaces. The goal with Wavelength Space is to highlight regional artists by bringing them together with strong contemporary artists who are nationally based. We want to expand our community’s experience of contemporary art and to provide a platform for the amazing artists in our region. Similarly, at Wavelength Studios (the recording studios that share a building with the art gallery), we help musicians, audio-book authors, podcasters, and content creators to polish their sound. We work with a wide range of musicians who are both locally and nationally based.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

We started our business right before the pandemic hit and had to navigate the best ways forward in a public facing business during a time when people weren’t going anywhere. The gallery’s programming began in February of 2021. We had to approach event planning slowly and cautiously. We knew that building a strong online foundation would be vital to the gallery during that time, and that is one of the things we think has helped us sustain into today. I think that one of the results of the pandemic is that it might matter less and less where you are geographically located when trying to participate in the art world. Some of the bias that may have existed and may still persist about artists outside of big cities “not being as serious” might have diminished. There is a palpable energy that can be felt when you’re living amongst all the different kinds of art and music venues that exist in bigger cities. The major hubs of art have a pulse and concentration is in their favor. That pulse and desire ‘to be seen’ is just as rich in rural communities, we simply have a less saturated and more dispersed network of support (other artists, curators, galleries, collectors, writers, publications, etc.) The pandemic was hard, but it also gave us a glimmer of hope that with the lifestyle and mindset transformations that occurred during that time, perhaps a contemporary gallery and recording studio located in a small town in Tennessee could grow to gain some traction.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Shortly after we decided to take the plunge on manifesting our creative dreams by purchasing the building that would be Wavelength Studios/Space, we found out that we were going to have a baby. We were so excited, but also a bit adrenaline rushed about the number of new risks we were balancing. Our business is essentially as old as our oldest daughter. Once work at Wavelength Space began while I had a small baby, I knew I would have to rely a lot upon community support and my husband to keep the ball rolling with what we’d started. I’m grateful that our business model allows for turn-taking, and symbiotic artistic ventures to co-exist, and to keep the shared space we’ve started alive. It would be immensely more difficult to nourish all of the things we are growing (children, a home, a family, a business, an art practice, a garden…) if we weren’t working as a team. Having children has reinforced our motivation to make it work.

Contact Info:

• Website: raquelmullins.com and wavelengthspace.com
• Instagram: @raquelmullinsart @wavelengthchatt @wavelength_space

Image Credits
Attached Image captions; 1. Split / Image of “Between Spaces” exhibition at Wavelength Space and Carnation Contemporary co-curated by Raquel Mullins and Rachael Zur. Images taken by Raquel and Katie Hargrave. 2023 2. Exhibition image of Raquel’s work installed in “Thresholds” collective exhibition at AXIS gallery in Sacramento, CA. Image taken by Axis member, Muzi Li Rowe. 2023 3. Image of Raquel standing with Eleanor Anderson and Angie To’s works in “Ethereal Pathways” at Wavelength Space. 2024 4. Group of artists sitting in the gallery with Masks in Wavelength’s inaugural exhibition, “Touch” curated by Raquel Mullins. Pictures from left to right (Summer Tomes, Alecia Vera Buckles, Laiza Fuhrmann, and Raquel Mullins). 2021 5. Raquel and baby Ivy at Wavelength’s 1st opening reception with Raquel’s “longest held object (mended grover).” 2021 6 & 7. Exhibition images of “Earth is a Time Machine” at Wavelength Space in October/November of 2023 with works by: Steven L Anderson (Atlanta, GA); Andrew Bailey Arend (Boone, NC); Liz Ensz (Baltimore, MD); Hannah Newman (Portland, OR); Kyle Peets (Walla Walla, WA); Kayla Powers (Detroit, MI); Anna Pugh (Nashville, TN); Cooper Siegel (Kansas City, MO), Kara Theart (Birmingham, AL ); Rachel Dinwiddie (San Diego, CA)