Rebecca Cummins (she/her) is inspired by science, its history, and instrumentation. She explores the possibilities of light, optics and natural phenomena in installations that have included a machine for making rainbows, a photographic rifle, sun and moon pointers, paranoid periscope dinner table devices, strobotacs, spore prints, microscopy – and a variety of sculptural and photographic approaches to marking time. She aspires to offer innovative, sometimes playful, or intimate ways to consider nature, time and the landscape.
Rebecca has exhibited widely internationally and is also active in public commissions and cross-disciplinary collaborations, such as with University of Washington Astro-biologist Woody Sullivan and Linda Wordeman, UW Wordeman Lab (Physiology and Biophysics) – and during related residencies at Symbiotica Lab for Biological Art, University of Western Australia, and the BioArt Society and University of Helsinki Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in far north Lapland.
At Playa, Rebecca looks forward to intersecting with artist / collaborator Paul DeMarini’s investigations into microbial electricity – and grappling with the desert environment and the scale of the Playa, by night and by day.
Rebecca lives in Seattle and is a Professor in the School of Art, University of Washington, following 16 years at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Photo credit: Misha Neininger