Printmaker Rachel Manly attended Nashoba Brooks and Lawrence Academy and is a graduate of Maine College of Art with a BFA in fine arts. Rachel interned with Portland, ME based artist Karen Gelardi and also helped her mother, Bromfield middle school art teacher Sharon Chandler, in the Art and Cloth studio. Describing her process Rachel explains, "Printmaking is a tool. Just like a paintbrush, scissor, pencil, or clay, printmaking is a means to a product. Print allows multiples. Through the power of printmaking I have been able to use imagery in multiple ways. I am not interested in creating the same exact image over and over again. I am more interested in how I can take imagery and continuously give it new life. I have been drawing cityscapes for the last year and I have learned a lot about materials and composition. I am now concentrating on developing new imagery."
Rachel is attracted to ecosystems whether it be the mountains of Sebago, Maine or the urban jungle of New York City and Boston. "Recently I have become interested in small communities and life without urbanization. I've always been visually attracted to the artwork produced by different tribes and cultures. I am attracted to African mud clothes. Each piece of mud cloth tells a story. No two pieces are alike and each pattern and color combination has a meaning. The symbols, arrangements, color as well as shape of the mud cloth reveal secrets. The mud cloth is also used to define a person's social status, character or occupation."
"My main goal as an artist is to create work that can be worn. This past year I spent a lot of time alternating clothing I found on the sale racks of my favorite stores and stitching, dying, and silk-screening them. I am obsessed with the Finnish Design company Marimekko. I found myself frustrated with today’s fashion. It seems as though every time I search the racks of my favorite stores I am never 100% in love with what I am finding. I decided to create a line of tee-shirts sold at Art and Cloth that fulfilled my own aesthetic requirements. Each garment is hand dyed, printed and sewn." Rachel also designed a logo for the store, an owl, which her mother explains has a prominent place in African-American and Native American cultures, two ethnicities she and her daughter share.
Rachel says she is inspired by the influences of Jean Michel Basquiat, Jean Dubuffet, Marc Jacobs, 1960s and 1970s rock posters, hippies, Marimekko, and the yellow submarine. She insists her best drawings weren't done in art classes. "I cringe when people say they aren't a good artist. For me, it's not about being able to render things perfectly; it's about putting myself onto paper, clay or whatever my medium may be."
