ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

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RACHEL STIFF

‘Gravel Pit’

A few miles behind my old neighborhood in Las Vegas, Nevada is a large gravel pit. Land is shoveled, scraped, lifted and relocated. Space is made. The gravel is then used for city or urban developments. My Gravel Pit drawing series imitates this manipulation of materials. Much like construction work, my pastel drawings create a new environment. Visual movement, pattern, form and a dust like atmosphere fill the two-dimensional space.

Rachel Stiff is a painter, educator and former all-around cowgirl. During the spring of 1986, she was born in Lewistown, Montana. Rachel holds an MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson (2012) and a BFA from the University of Montana in Missoula (2009). Her work has been shown throughout the West and acquired by the Emmy award winning Traktor Films of Santa Monica, CA. In 2013, Rachel participated in RAID Projects, a three-month long artist residency in downtown Los Angeles. After living and working there for nearly a year, Rachel moved to Nevada. In Las Vegas, her work can be found in the permanent collection at the Marjorie Barrick Museum and was recently shown in a solo exhibition at The Winchester Cultural Center. Identifying as a true Westerner, her work examines the construction of the modern landscape and desert-urban interface through abstraction.

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