Rachel Dawson

Energy Cleanse are a series of paintings that explore the energetic capabilities of color through a close examination and replication of crystals through my mediumistic approach to making paintings. The belief in the transformative power of these rocks is similar to power objects or talismans. I think of the work of painter Agnes Pelton and her interest in the metaphysical properties of color and their ability to bring the viewer into a state of enlightenment. The act of painting is to make a power center. My large-scale crystal paintings are at once talismans, meditations on color, and energetic offerings.

This work is inspired by 19th and 20th century spirit photography, specifically of female mediums producing ectoplasmic materializations. These works on paper explore the materialization phenomena of ectoplasm as artistic production.

Between Here and There is a phosphorescent-glowing, sculptural installation housed in the basement of Alter Space. Inspired by 20th century spirit photography, the jail cell becomes a “spirit cabinet,” the small space a medium would enter before channeling spirits. Once inside, the viewer is immersed in an illusory, mirrored room with hundreds of glowing white porcelain “ectoplasms” that appear to be mystically suspended in mid-air. A gathering of spirits transported from afar, the illusion is of a disorientating, supernatural space that, for the viewer, feels like floating somewhere in the space of the in-between.

This series of digital photographs explores the metaphor of light and shadow as it connects to ideas of 'spirit' and the space between presence and absence.

Portals is a collaborative project with Julie Henson. Inspired by the history of Mokelumne Hill (California) as told through newspaper clippings, historical photos from Calaveras County, and the photos by Edith Irvine, the ghostly installation explores the fleeting hopes left by the Gold Rush Era. The slide show incorporates collaged historical images projected onto a shadow wall, which holds a ghost image -- reminiscent of a double exposure photograph -- as the projection changes. What results is a layering of recurrent images of mining, water, and bridges, themes which visualize the elusive quest for wealth and fortune inherent in the culture of late 19th Century and early 20th Century America.

Collection of Captured Manifestations, a basement installation of phosphorescent porcelain sculptures, explores the symbolic range of ectoplasm. Ectoplasm, a concept that grew out of Victorian physics, often manifested through a medium’s bodily orifices and offers a deep metaphor for the relation between external matter, immaterial thought, and artistic creation. A medium's body became a porous vehicle as the phenomena exuded from mouth, nose, breast and even vagina: she acted as a transmitter, in an analogous fashion to the wireless receiver, catching cosmic rays whose vibrations produced phantoms and presences. In staging their ectoplasmic manifestations, mediums were, for a time, able to invert the gendered hierarchies that existed in the scientific and para-scientific production of knowledge and experience a unique form of agency that reached beyond the political ends and religious goals of the Spiritualist séance room. Inspired by the century old sample of yellowed cheesecloth “ectoplasm” on view at the Society for Psychical Research in Cambridge (UK), each sculpture is made from the same material purported to be spirit matter.

Phantasmagoria explores the intersection of art and psychic processes. Motivated by a long-standing interest in occult practices, this work investigates the activities of 19th and 20th century Spiritualist camps and the quest to see the immaterial through the perspective of contemporary art production. From the standpoint of absurdity, this body of work explores belief, proof, fraud, illusion, and the smoke-like substance of the ethereal body called ectoplasm.

20 women artists participated in an art-making project. In dipping, crumpling, and folding the paper in clay slip, can the artist transfer and embed presence? The objects are kiln fired, burning out the original paper. All that remains is a record of a gesture.The pieces are then presented to a psychic for a reading. Check out my Psychic Reading Sculpture Video.

I am curious in investigating the source of repeated imagery in my art work. So, I decided to visit a past-life regression therapist. In seeking answers, I found another void.