TAKING SHAPE
by Rachel Obranovich
November 22, 2019 – January 15, 2020
An exhibition exploring lines and movement through drawing, dance, and sound.
About the Exhibition
About two years ago I was living in a foreign country as a formally trained artist, an instructor without a formal classroom, and a new mother in search of a query. I set out to investigate the following questions: What makes an art class relevant and accessible? How do space, materials, and methods influence creative activity? How does one provide instructions that foster and inspire, without limiting or hindering, an individual’s capability to investigate and explore?
Searching for answers to these questions, I found myself on a spiraling path of development that revisits four simple actions; active research, collaboration, artistic response, and reflection; each leading into the next, gaining momentum, and creating interesting points of intersection. With drive and focused attention, this spiral has the capability to continue to infinity, or exhaustion, as well as to begin again. These inquiries led me to collaborate with artists working in other disciplines including dance, sound, and photography, while also pushing my own work into new territories of performance.
Now, I find myself back in my native country, but in a new region, again preparing for a new child, and continuing my line of inquiry around art instruction and creation, but with growing knowledge and interest in early childhood development. Since moving into the artist residence space in the Castle Community, I have continued to investigate lines as pathways of movement, paying particular attention to the space that happens within, between and around the lines. Shapes are created. These shapes serve as connection points or, structural building blocks to further visual experiments and development of ideas. With this exhibition, I share this journey in the hopes that other artists, educators, parents, and other creative minds in the position of providing instruction and insight might find inspiration or points of intersection with their own experience and, within these points, an opportunity to re-examine, begin anew or continue on an individual journey that expands, revisits, and defines its own limits.
About the Artist
Rachel is a native of Texas where she studied both visual and performing arts, ultimately earning an MFA from the University of Dallas, focusing on the figurative and metaphoric qualities of everyday objects in still life painting. Upon graduating she began teaching art at the Ursuline Academy of Dallas, and working as a freelance scenic artist for several different theaters in the Dallas area. She exhibited her work both locally and regionally and participated in the Vermont Studio Center artist residency in Johnson, Vermont. Soon thereafter Rachel relocated to Zurich, Switzerland, where she continued to maintain her studio practice and advance her studies in art and instruction. She completed a Certificate in Advanced Studies program in Arts and Design at the Zurich University for the Arts, and was selected to attend two more artist residencies in Berlin, Germany, and Brighton, United Kingdom. During this time she also worked at a local Swiss community center organizing painting sessions for children ages 1 to 4. This coincided with the birth of her first son, Rafael, and a new, more focused interest in early childhood development and art instruction. Fueled by these exciting and challenging life changes she is now taking steps to include more performative, collaborative and abstract elements in the art making process which you will see evidence of in her latest exhibition, “Taking Shape.”
Cover image: Respond Reflect Rebuild, 2019. Watercolor, tempera, pencil, marker, thread, paper.
