LIV ING COLOR CHICAGO ARTIST RACHEL GROPPER. by EILEEN G’SELL / Photography by ATTILIO D’AGOSTINO
The revolutions of a mobile beget a quiet hypnotic quality—shape, shade and light conspire to soothe and stir the mind and eyes. The mobiles of Chicago artist Rachel Gropper—comprised of dangling geometric forms in black, white and a select few primary colors—appear simple, but in motion feel instantly choreographic, each piece dancing at a certain pace while synchronized to the rest of the company.
For all the ways she plays with perception—sculpture, photography, drawing, styling—the aesthetic coheres through a consciously sunny, quirky color palate. Gropper grew up near the Blue Ridge Mountains in Ruckersville, Virginia, a small town outside of Charlottesville, “always drawing and creating,” and soon ran out of art classes to take in high school. “Like any kid in a small town who is artistic, creativity was my whole outlet,” she reflects. Today, her apartment overlooking Humboldt Park also serves as her studio, her probing vision not only an outlet, but a livelihood.
“I was given an education on function and form,” says Gropper, who earned her BFA in graphic design from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, “and I’ve poured that background into my mobiles, website, everything I do.”
Tell me about how you came to make mobiles—they
At the heart of her practice is the blog and retail site Curio, “an exploration of the elements that rule the way we visually experience the world.” Tiny painted tulips blink below a photo of a street curb; red-andyellow palm trees pulse over thick outline portraits.
I took some time off from the type of art I was doing all the time and just explored different mediums. When I made the first iteration of the mobile, I realized, “I really like this! I need to keep making these.” I usually do the mobiles in a batch—so it takes about a day to
remind me of scaled-down Alexander Calder.
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