Rachel Phillips

At the end of 2022, I found myself struggling to make a piece of art for this project. Our remit was to use a selection of pages from the dissenting minority opinion opposing the ruling in Dobbs. V. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but my eyes glazed over as I tried to read. What a weight of jumbled words, powerless to legally protect women from the somehow greater legal weight of other words. I looked at these thin pages of dissent, and felt buried by their scribbles, their footnotes and citations, their reasoned arguments. Turning to my sewing machine, I began to zig-zag stitch each line under crisp strands of red thread. “Thwack, thwack, thwack,” went the needle of the machine as it pierced the paper. When I examined the finished page, I thought of the phrase “seeing red.” Literally here, but also figuratively—an angry, violent red. Working with the pages later, the red stripes of the flag emerged from the zig-zag lines. I left only one word uncovered on the page, the word that best encapsulates the weary defiance I feel about this entire nasty mess: Dissenting…

Bio

Rachel (b. 1983) began photography while completing her undergraduate degree at Skidmore College, graduating in 2005.  In numerous group and solo exhibitions she has presented a series of projects exploring the photograph as object, often resulting in unique works incorporating a specialized transfer printing technique as well as other processes like encaustic wax and materials ranging from old envelopes to 19th century cabinet cards. A frequent theme in the work is a desire to “reanimate” the vernacular photographs and paper ephemera in her collection by reworking them in a variety of ways to create imagery that is resonant with the past yet has a new vitality and reflection of our own time and perspective.

In addition to photography, Rachel works in the San Francisco Bay Area as a tutor for children with learning differences.