Artist Statement:
Informed by local ecology and post-human approaches to place, my work explores how we can attune to and learn from places often overlooked. My practice finds its essence through a posture of being-with and making-with; forms, colors, and ideas are generated through mutual involvement between site and artist. Paper castings of water erosion paths rise up on steel legs to meet the viewer. Textiles dyed with plants filter the viewers' experience through colors and shapes derived from a specific site. Paper sculptures reimagine piles of discarded asphalt or plant cuttings, and drawings exist as assemblages of maps, memories, and walks. After gathering organic materials for an installation, the same plants can be used to create a natural dye, which in turn is used to dye fibers, wood, or paper for sculptural and textile works. My use of materials is cyclical, imitating the way living things move and evolve in a changing climate and world. Like ourselves, these materials and processes have the ability to record and respond to places as a way of dwelling with and within them. Each piece indexes moments of unique intermingling of beings, both human and more- than-human, and facilitate dialogue considering the following questions: What and who is nature? How can we be participants within places without mistakenly thinking ourselves authors of them? Ultimately, my work is an invitation and an opportunity to practice seeing and understanding who is dwelling with us in a particular place. To pay attention is an act of resistance to numbness and the habit of merely walking by. Balancing rigorous research and play, my work continually teaches me how to see and how to move at a pace closer to that of the more-than-human.
About the Artist
Rebecca Padilla is an interdisciplinary visual artist and educator living and working in Phoenix, Arizona. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Oklahoma and is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Art at Arizona State University. After moving to the United States at age 10, she has lived a transient life and is influenced by the many places she has loved. Her work explores themes of place-making, belonging, and transience through a wide variety of materials and processes. She grounds her practice in the words of anthropologist Tim Ingold, who say “The forms of objects are not imposed from above, but grow from the mutual involvement of people and materials in an environment..-we work from within the world, not upon it”. Ultimately, she strives to make work that deepens our understanding and love of place and each other.