Featured Student
Rachel Church
“I just love to create, and to think about what will best serve for what I want to communicate.”
– Rachel Church
Rachel Church currently resides in Scarborough, Maine and is attending the IMFA Intermedia program at the University of Maine. Church was born and raised in Maine. She grew up in rural western Maine, and graduate high school from Farmington. She has been around art her whole life, as her mother was a maker of all things. Making has thus been ingrained into her upbringing. As Church was growing up, she thought that she would be an engineer because of her love for math however when she went to college at the University of Southern Maine and realized engineering was not as hands-on as she would have preferred. While she was taking an engineering course, she was also taking an art course. Church had always loved and made art as it was part of her upbringing. She felt like she was learning more and working harder and just getting much more out of her art classes, in turn, she switched from engineering to fine arts full time. She graduated in 2009 and ended up working in an assisted living facility for five years. Church decided to go back to school to finish her BFA, with a concentration with printmaking, and a minor in book arts. This is when Church fell in love with artist books and started combing her craft.
Her family life is what inspired her to continue to create art beyond her formal schooling. This is also why she enjoys book arts and printmaking because she can alter images into a three-dimensional object, and just make, as she had grown up to do. Currently, Church is working a lot with traditions, connections and family history through the use of her art. Creating from her own experiences is extremally important to Church, however, she wants to include only enough of her experiences that her audience understands what she is aiming to say, and is also able to identify and connect with the piece from their own point of view.
After graduating Church hopes to teach. Currently, she is attending the rapid Teaching Academy through the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL) on the University of Maine campus. As well as a teaching assistantship, completing her field experience with Susan Groce in the printmaking department in the undergraduate department. Her role is to assist in teaching two printmaking one courses, she oversees the screen-printing assignment, in which she is incorporating a bookmaking component into their assignment.
Rachel Churchs work is currently on exhibit in Spain. See the exhibition HERE.
View a recent publication on cyantoyping by Church HERE.
View Rachel Churchs Portfolio HERE