Where All Things Were Possible: Rachel Sydlowski, BFA '97

Rachel Sydlowski has invented an elaborate pulley system to hoist her large-scale installations up and down the walls of her industrial studio based in an old carpet mill in Yonkers, New York. 
 
During the school year she teaches art at a public high school in Eastchester, often getting up at 5 am to fit an hour in at the studio before classes start. At the moment, she’s deep in preparations for an installation for the new Bronx Children’s Museum opening in late 2022. 
 
Unlike her typical vertical, architecture inspired pieces, this seven-year installation will be an immersive diorama nestled into a cave hidden under a water feature. Children will be able to spot animals hidden in painted foliage as a UVA “blacklight” flashes on for an instant. 
 
“I was inspired by the plants and animals along the Bronx River, but also by the way that you can miss the rich wildlife unless you seek it out,” she says. At that moment, a breeze blows in through her studio window and all the paper leaves rustle, revealing a slender-necked duck hidden behind them. 
 
Here's an excerpt from the rest of SMFA’s virtual visit to Rachel’s studio: 
 
SMFA: Can you speak to your complex attraction to Gilded Age interiors and American architecture?
 
Rachel Sydlowski (RS): I was born in Newport, Rhode Island, grew up in Providence, and now live in New York City. Each place is home to some stellar examples of excessive architecture from the Colonial Era to the Gilded Age. I both love their aesthetic aims and also take issue with the wealth used to create them which was amassed in deeply nefarious ways. I’m seduced by the myth and repelled by the truth, which is a horrible place to be philosophically, but rich in material for art making and investigation. 
 
SMFA: You were part of the 2021 class of SMFA at Tufts Traveling Fellows. What is your project about and where did you go?
 
RS: Examining wellness luxury experiences and the concept of the American wilderness retreat, I am investigating several Victorian-era resorts in the Hudson Valley of New York. The culminating artworks will respond to the historical relationship between leisure time, nature, and wealth in America. I’m also interested in the link between nostalgia for the pastoral and mistrust of modernity and technology. It’s a theme both specific to these resorts and universal. 
                                                
SMFA: How did you choose SMFA in the first place and what part of that chapter stays with you today? 
 
RS: I was a transfer student from a more traditional liberal arts college. A friend’s father suggested I look into SMFA, and it was a great recommendation. What stays with me is the openness and lack of hierarchy there. I try to keep this as an essential truth in my teaching. Additionally, process-based inquiry and the methodology of evolving as an artist through critique prepared me for later experiences. I’m incredibly thankful for the critique process and for the opportunity to participate in review boards with students far more advanced than I was at the time. It was like glimpsing into a future where all things were possible. 
 
SMFA: How did your practice become clear to you over time and how did you land on making large-scale mixed media installations in particular?
 
RS: I wanted to make immersive installations and engage with decoration and grandeur. I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. My ambitions outsized my resources. A semester of screen-printing at CUNY coincided with the Print/Out exhibition at MOMA. I awoke to the vast potential of screen-printing and its possibilities. Making print installations was an apt solution that gave me a lot of freedom and very little burden.

Lead Image courtesy of Rachel Sydlowski. "Parlor in the Wilderness", screenprint collage, porcelain, wood, 2019.