Rachel Owens (born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1972) is an American artist. She is best known for her multi-media sculptures and installations, which often incorporate a social component. Many of her works are made from crushed glass. [1] [2] She lives and works in New York, NY, and is an assistant professor of art and design at Purchase College, SUNY. [3]
Engaged in broad fields of practice from public art and traditional gallery work to activist based Community Theater, Owens tackles issues of hierarchical social conditions, environmental destruction, consumption and the points where these things intersect. Working sculpturally, performatively and socially, she uses material as meaning: what the sculpture is made of- is what the sculpture means- is what the sculpture does. Bottle shards, cardboard, coal, cut up humvees, and the dust of marble are all used to convey meaning, emotion, and action as they take on forms from porch to iceberg. Often with jobs beyond metaphor, the sculptures become stages, public seating, centers for protest and elevated vantage points.
Owens has been included in exhibitions both in the US and internationally including The X Krasnoyarsk Biennial, RU; Franco Soffiantino Contemporary, IT; Austrian Cultural Forum, NY; The Frist Museum, TN; Socrates Sculpture Park, LIC; and the New Museum Window, NY among others. In February 2020, her solo museum show, The Hypogean Tip opened at The Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport CT. She has had reviews and inclusion in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Modern Painters, Flash Art and Triple Canopy Anthology, and she has received grants from the Joan Mitchell, Pollack Krasner, and Harpo Foundations as well as a Cultural Humanitarian Grant from the US consulate. Her work can be found in many collections in the US and abroad, among them; The Beth Rudin Dewoody Collection, The Pritzker Family, Sprint Collection and D. Mullin JR. Owens is assistant professor of art & design and chair of the sculpture department at SUNY Purchase College.
Owens received a BFA from the University of Kansas, Lawrence. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999.
Owens has exhibited internationally. [4] [5] [6]
Owens' work has been discussed in the New York Times, [9] [10] Art in America, Hyperallergic, [11] Urban Glass, [12] Sculpture Magazine, [13] and the Village Voice, [14] among other publications. She has received grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Harpo Foundation, [15] and the United States Embassy in Russia.
The Hypogean Tip, with essays from Robbin Zella, Maisa Tisdale and Stamatina Gregory, Housatonic Museum of Art February 2020
Gut Rehab, newspaper project in conjunction with exhibition, with contributions from Adam Helms, Scott Zieher, Ilya Shipilovitch, Mira Schor
F15, publication as part of Smile Always at Ziehersmith Gallery, NYC 2015 Kraznoyarsk Biennial, essay from Anna Tolstova 2013
Invalid Format: Triple Canopy Anthology, vol. 1, 2012
Nineteen Eighty-Four, Austrian Cultural Forum, essay by David Harper 2010 EAF 2007, Socrates Sculpture Park, essay from Alyson Baker, 2007
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