BY THIS MEANS: SEGMENT LADDERS – RACHEL YODER

By This Means is an exhibition by visual artist Rachel Yoder, who lives and maintains a studio in a mountain valley near Nelson, BC.

Over the last three years, Yoder has explored how working as a carpenter for 25 years has affected her art practice.  In By This Means: Segment Ladders, Yoder takes the tools and the components familiar from her daily experience of construction and uses these images and processes in making paintings, prints and sculpture.

In this exhibition, the central tool explored is the ladder. The repetition of the ladder echoes the repetition of the years of Yoder’s labor. The ladder empowered her to change the landscape by enabling her to work as a building carpenter. However, as Yoder used the tools to change her environment, the tools themselves also changed her. They changed her body and her relationships, and later they changed her understanding of herself. Now the tools no longer function as instruments for home-building; they are instruments for mark making.