By Rachel Stiff

One of the pieces of mine that people really respond to is ‘What’s up with the sky?’ and I rarely get a chance to talk about its history.  This painting was created during a time spent in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, California changes you. The air has this quality to it; like a huge cat that won’t leave your lap. It’s on you. Light behaves differently here as well. Smog and moisture pair up each day in different quantities to determine the forecast. Sidewalks, walls and highway overpasses all show signs of human presence. Graffiti is a constant companion. The city is home to the largest homeless population in the United States. Watch out for scatological debris. Beautiful flowers and thick monstrous foliage line the highways. Traffic jams allow much time for viewing the ditch and searching for inner stillness from behind the steering wheel.

Being granted an artist residency in 2013, I spent a summer in Chinatown. This area is known as DTLA or Downtown Los Angeles.  Miles of industrial buildings loom sleepily—warehouses of decommissioned factories just begging for the downtown artist movement to breathe life back into them. And it did. After my three-month residency was over I decided to stay in L.A. Wanting to make a little history for myself, I started seeking exhibitions. Some of them were hard earned and others came as invitation.

I kept my studio downtown but found a job on the Westside. The commute after work was a nightmare, and I was often too tired to make it happen. Day to day logistics can be tough in a city this size where everyone has a car and must use it. Not having much experience with big cities, I was in awe at all the human life and activity. Immeasurable human history and story compressed between layers of landforms, plants, cars and interstate systems. I was enjoying new friends and nurturing connections, but couldn’t shake this caged feeling.

While commuting to Las Vegas nearly once a month, I enjoyed watching the city limits gradually give way to barren desert. It was a shift in thinking; a state of mind. City life with its complex relationship to the natural world, all swept up into the strict order of a new eco-system. The austere and beautiful design of the Mojave Desert appealed to me. A heavy smog can be seen creepily hanging, beyond the San Bernardino mountains when returning to L.A. Around this time, I had a breakthrough in the studio. As with any new movement comes uncertainty. What’s up with Sky? has proven successful on levels both aesthetic and as a true representation of my love-hate relationship with the West’s mega-city.