I am a multimedia artist driven to explore the tender, powerful and mysterious. Painting, installation, and poetic sculptural objects have all been recent modes of expression. The work is a constant effort to materialize divinity—not divine in the sense of religion, but personally divine in the sense of describing a core truth.

Currently I am creating a body of large scale paintings depicting female MMA fighters locked in twisted grappling positions. I am interested in how the figures’ strain, struggle, violence, pain, and spirit speaks to my own SA survivorship and similar burdens of women globally.

Recent installation work Poem Stones featured at Brew House Arts and Blank Space involve black marble tiles set in hand-dug earth that are laser etched with poems. These poems come from an in-progress collection that considers fear as an invitation, containing themes of death, spirit, dreams, trauma and the paranormal.

Bio 

Born and raised on a farm in McDonald, PA, Rachel Morgan Simmons is a painter, published poet, and multidisciplinary artist based in Pittsburgh, PA. 2022-2023 Distillery Resident at The Brew House Association. With work featured in the group show Platonic Solids curated by Liz Rudnick at Blank Space in November 2023. She received a BFA in Studio Art from Allegheny College in 2016 earning awards for both junior and senior comprehensive projects. She worked as studio assistant for New York City based artists Alexi Worth and Barnaby Furnas 2014 - 2016.