Grief is a Portal: Shadow Work

• Saturday, Oct 28, 2023  4pm - 6pm Closing Reception
• Sun, Oct 1, 2023 - Tue, Oct 31, 2023  9am - 5pm On view

Sawyer Yards presents Grief is a Portal: Shadow Work, a solo exhibition of works by Silos artist Rachel Gonzales. The exhibition is on view in the Bay 300 Gallery of the building through October 31. There will be a closing reception with the artist on October 28, from 4-6pm. 

From the artist: This collection is a personal archive of my own shadow work and inner child healing while confronting death and honoring the collective waves of grief on a soulful level.

Grief is a portal that stops me in my tracks and grants me access to a deeper truth beneath the surface. It is the dark side of the moon—our shadow selves that are always there yet never seen but felt. I never completely knew life until I knew death. I’m shedding light on this through my art. Everything I’ve ever made has emerged from a place ranging from the depths of hopelessness, stillness and ordinariness, and triumph over heartache. I use poetry and language in my titles or in the work itself to hint at the grieving process. Befriending my own monsters of grief over the past eleven years has given me an innate ability to uncover raw truths and embrace vulnerability as my strength as a part of being human.

It is the divine gaze that enables the viewer and the subject to connect in the ephemeral moment of seeing and being seen--the raw human experience of being present and having one’s presence felt.

About the Artist: Rachel Gonzales is a Filipina abstract contemporary visual artist educated and experienced in architecture, fine art, and mysticism. Informed by her architectural background in designing physical spaces, her paintings also serve as containers or portals for the human experience to be felt. Her life's work focuses on reclaiming the female gaze as a powerful way to see beyond the form. Gonzales graduated from Rice University with a Bachelor of Architecture, has continued her art education at The Art League Houston over the past decade, and is a graduate from Houston's 2019 chapter of Artist Inc.  She is a founding member of Filipinx Artists of Houston and enjoys engaging her local community through art collectives centered on healing and hosting art workshops timed with phases of the moon.  She currently practices out of her own studio (#301) at The Silos at Sawyer Yards. Her work has been exhibited in galleries locally in Houston and at the McNay in San Antonio.