About the Artist
Rachel (they/she)
Desert swallowtail transplant, Rachel Blair, is a visual, textual, and sonic artist. A saturated seepage of shapeshifters inhabit her textured atmospheres, licking the wounds of what is inherited, what is distorted—through metamorphosis and encounters with the demonic.
Rachel flits between the Sonoran Desert and the Pacific Northwest, teaching at Clark College and dreaming of worlds free from systemic violence. She has offered her artistic conjurings since 2021.
Rachel’s illustrations won the First Matter Press 2026 Cover Artist Prize and have appeared at Rancho Linda Vista’s Wilson Barn Gallery. Her writing was recognized through the Northwest Authors Committee, The Roadrunner Review, and won the Portland State University 2025 Mary Folkestad Scholarship and the University of Arizona’s Tucson Festival of Books 2017 Fiction Contest. She has a background in Journalism & Violin Performance from Northern Arizona University and has an MFA in Creative Writing from PSU.
