Artist Statement
My work and practice center around perspective, awareness, place, community, and the climate crisis. I believe that humans are unable to adapt and react to these changing circumstances because we are stuck in unacknowledged grief and anxiety over the massive losses we are experiencing. Seeking to activate multiple levels of awareness, I use story, sound, music, architecture, archives, performance, and drawing to facilitate immersive, ephemeral, shared experiences. I am investigating human concepts of the non-human world, specifically through modes of storytelling and communal acts, and how the decline of such acts impact our concepts of nature. I believe the transference of oral tradition deriving from generations of collective memory is both disrupted and enabled by technological advances, and that there are both opportunity and loss in that tension.
Bio
Rachel Anne York is a transdisciplinary artist and musician from North Carolina. Her work incorporates drawing, print, sound, music, place, performance, and installation, creating communal experiences of ecological emotions. She received her undergraduate degrees in Music Performance (Double Bass) and Art & Design from East Carolina University in 2012, and a Master in Fine Arts in Studio Art at the Maine College of Art in 2020. Influenced by her Southern Appalachian heritage, she has also benefited from study and work in Brazil and Italy. York is the recipient of the McClelland Roberts Memorial Scholarship, Lane Family Music Scholarship, and the MFA Dean’s Scholarship.
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Education
2020 MFA in Studio Art, Maine College of Art, Portland ME
2012 BM magna cum laude, Music Performance (Double Bass), Art and Design (Minor) East Carolina University, Greenville NC
Teaching Experience
2018-20 Teaching Assistant, Maine College of Art, Portland Maine
Courses taught: Portland Walking Library with Samantha Haedrich (Fall 2018), Anatomical Drawing with Hilary Irons (Spring 2019), Creative Research and Climate Change with Annika Earley (Fall 2019), Digital Audio Recording with Steve Drown (Spring 2020)
2013 Teaching Assistant, Italy Intensives Study Abroad Program, East Carolina University, Tuscany, Italy
(courses: Drawing with Catherine Walker, Digital Photography with Jim Abbott)
Scholarships and Honors
2018-20 MFA Dean’s Scholarship, Maine College of Art, Portland, ME
2008-12 Lane Family Music Scholarship, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
2007-08 McClelland Roberts Memorial Scholarship, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
2007-11 Principal Bassist, East Carolina University Symphony Orchestra, Greenville, NC
Exhibitions
2018 The Body Project, group show, Greensboro Project Space, Greensboro, NC
2019 RITUAL / POWER, group show, Maine College of Art, Portland, ME
Original Performances
2019 Water Cycles: Story of the Vagrant Great Black Hawk, Maine College of Art,
Portland, ME
2019 the grace that beckons, the joy that kills, Portland Observatory, Portland, ME
Publications
2020 Irons, Hilary. “The Empaths.” The Chart. Vol. 5, No. 2, Spring 2020. Web.
Skills
Professional Musician (double bass, voice, composition, performance), Pro Tools, Adobe Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere Pro
Volunteer Work
2018-20 Portland Community Orchestra, Portland, ME
2017 TypeCon (Presented by the Society of Typographic Aficionados), Boston, MA
2015-18 High Point University Community Orchestra, High Point, NC
2011 Holmes-Hicks Organic Farm Chillicothe, Illinois
2009 Sander’s Ridge Farm, Boonville, NC
2005-13 Greensboro Philharmonia Orchestra, Greensboro, NC