About
Rachel Stickney is a Michigan based painter, book artist and arts educator. She received her BFA from the Frostic School of Art at Western Michigan University in 2015.
Though disciplined as a painter, she creates contemporary book arts in a variety of mediums and styles. Historical practices influence Rachel's work while experimentation with new materials and techniques push her to create unique pieces.
Rachel is the owner of a small batch bindery called Parallax Book Press. She makes handmade books, journals, paper products, and hand tools for fellow makers. She also works in the Michigan library system where her love of reading and learning allows her to share her talents with others.
She can often be found with her nose in a book researching her next project or enthusiastically talking about her latest read.
Artist Statement
As an observer by nature, my work is motivated through imagining objects have memory. Historically, books have been used as memory tools to record personal stories, myths, practical instruction, business, or historical events. I like to explore what “memory tool” means and play with ideas of objects found in nature, much like how an archeologist or naturalist uncovers an artifact or identifies a new species. Is this object animal? Mineral? Man-made?
I make both books and non-books with this thought process. I like to tinker, play, and engineer new book structures that would not typically be considered a book. I push the boundaries of form and function through haptics and experimentation. Using materials like clay, wire, bones, metals, thread, foliage, bugs, and paper, I ground the work back to the real world that has a sense of the familiar, yet recontextualize it into something new.