Rachel Hornaday
@hornaday
For over 20 years, Rachel Hornaday has been collecting and creating collages from the interiors of security envelopes, treating their printed patterns as both graphic compositions and intimate spells for protection. What is normally hidden inside an envelope becomes, in Hornaday’s hands, a densely patterned surface of repeated lines, triangles, grids, and geometric fragments.
Exploring the notion of how we create safety, these patterns reference documents such as passports, birth certificates, and paper money, all laced with security features. Using triangular shapes as building blocks, Hornaday references the architectural elements found in pyramids, burial chambers, standing stones, and places of worship, all designed to keep the psyche safe and the soul at ease. Her angular forms can suggest figures, creatures, structures, or symbols without settling completely into any one category. The resulting constructions depict magical figures and beings, laden with mystical qualities, emerging from fields of repetition, fragmentation, and negative space.
Biography
Rachel Hornaday is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Growing up in the woods of the Georgia mountains, she developed a sensitivity to color, patterns, and variation in nature. She’s translated this sensitivity to the decoding of patterns and colors in her art making, exploring the balance between structure and abstraction in both rural and urban environments.
With a BFA in Printmaking and Ceramics from San Francisco State University, her work in two- and three-dimensional art has led her to an extensive career as a prop designer and prop stylist in still life photography. She has continued to exhibit work in galleries in San Francisco and New York City, and paint murals and other commissions, while working out of her printmaking and ceramic studios, where she creates something new every day.
