Bio

Rachel Horner is a Baltimore-based artist who examines the complex entanglement between humans, the environment, and the world’s biodiversity. She was born in California, and currently lives in Baltimore, MD where she earned her M.F.A. from Towson University. She holds a B. S. in Art Education, and has taught Art since 2013. Her work has been shown internationally, with exhibitions in Mexico, Colorado and Delaware. The recipient of an environmental initiative art scholarship in her undergraduate studies, she has continued to create environmental work, and was awarded the Terminal Degree Graduate Fellowship for 2019-2020. Largely inspired by international travel, Horner visited Mexico for a self directed art residency and earned a scholarship to attend Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts in Tennessee. She also has experience as an arts writer and curator. Her interdisciplinary work encompasses painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture to investigate nature’s vulnerability and paradoxical ability to convalesce.

Artist Statement

A seed is unknowingly transported to a new place. A fire decimates a rainforest, leaving only burning embers and ashes. Every action creates an echo that reverberates throughout the intricate, interconnected ecosystem. Whether a foreign species overtaking their new home, or a coral reef breathing its dying breath, our experiences shift and sway the delicate balance within each environment. I examine the complexity of our climate crisis by employing saturated hues, layering images over and over again, alluding to global data maps, chemical spills, and animal agriculture. Within the double exposures I create from photographs I take of nature, plants and wildlife struggle to survive. I investigate the duality of nature’s immense resilience and simultaneous fragility through the deconstruction and reconstruction of an image that has been layered, cut, and reassembled on mirrored plexiglass. The presence versus absence of both image and mirror leaves viewers to draw their own conclusions about our existence in a time where climate change is disbelieved and our lives are increasingly globalized.