Rachel Meginnes

Interdisciplinary

Lives and works in Western North Carolina
(b. 1977, American)

Q: If you were a paint color in the hardware store, what would it be called?

A: “Indigo Smash – Indigo blue that is fluorescent and bold in nature.”

Details

ARTIST STATEMENT

Using old quilts and family heirlooms which have been stuffed away in boxes or donated to Goodwill, I deconstruct and reconstruct these pieces into new iterations of themselves. I find value and potential in the domestic textiles we no longer find useful and see myself as a collaborator – one in a chain of many makers who believes in the proactive power of creation.

We exist at a time when the infrastructure of our world is crumbling around us. Climate change, systemic inequities, and resulting traumas pervade our ability to think clearly and positively. To survive we will need to shift our thinking, find purpose, and form potential out of the objects and efforts we thought had run dry.

I work with textiles today because they have the haptic ability to convey care and require the physical acts of focus and perseverance. I make this work for my own well-being and in the hopes of sharing with others my ability to see potential in the everyday objects and ideas that surround us.

CV // Rachel Meginnes

ABOUT

Rachel Meginnes grew up surrounded by hooked rugs made by her mother and grandmother. Cut from recycled wool cloth, these works hung on the walls and laid on the floors of her childhood homes. From a young age, her eye was trained to see the potential in discarded materials and to have an appreciation for the histories these textiles could tell.
Rachel’s current practice revolves around this idea of repurposing through her own collection, deconstruction, and reutilization of vintage textiles into floor and wall-based works. Fascinated by the potential of what something can become, she abstracts and transforms the structure and function of
familiar objects.
Born and raised in rural Vermont, Rachel learned how to weave in high school and spent two years studying traditional ikat and rag weaving techniques in northern Japan.
Post graduate school, she co-founded a Tibetan rug company in Seattle, Washington and Gangtok, Sikkim, designing and producing one-of-kind rugs for the interiors market.
In 2012, she moved to the mountains of North Carolina to become a resident artist at Penland School of Craft.
Rachel currently resides near Penland and has a studio just south of the school’s campus.