Artist Statement

My work is a visual archive that captures specific relationships to home, family, and the uncertainty of memory. I am curious about my Italian background. When studying my father's old photographs, I am noticing similar characteristics between the generations. I see my aunt's smile, my father's posture, and my giant brown eyes. Everything is familiar but still disconnected.

Through conversation with relatives and translating family books and documents, (from Italian to English), I am collaging such fragments into poems, paintings, drawings, and photographs. Images relating to home are placed upon one another through acrylic paint, frosted mylar, vellum, and text. The materials are transparent, thus clouding and blurring images while providing a small preview of that is underneath, what has become forgotten. Such an act of repetitiveness is a notion of what I can truly recall from my past, memories that will continue to fade with time.

*Images, Between the Garage Bins, Our Window, and Waiting Room, courtesy of Anna Leonowens Gallery, photographer Séamus Gallagher*

Biography

Rachel Anzalone was born in Inwood, NY and grew up in Manahawkin, NJ. She obtained a BFA degree from Stockton University in 2014 and an MFA degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2019. Her work has been featured in the Stockton Art Gallery, the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts Gallery, PhilaMOCA: Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art, Art Mûr, and the Anna Leonowens Gallery. Currently, Rachel is the Cape Breton University's Art Gallery Technician. She resides in Sydney, Nova Scotia.