About
Rachel Reichert is an artist whose studio practice is rooted in craft and expands across jewelry, small sculpture, installation, writing, photography, and functional objects. Across these forms, she examines landscape, architecture, material culture, and the layered histories embedded within them.
Reichert builds objects that compress larger environments into smaller forms: jewelry modeled after collapsing structures, cast metal forms that echo volcanic rock, and flatware shaped by histories of labor and post-industrial economies. Her work often begins with a structure, site, object, or historical condition that is selectively isolated, edited, and rebuilt through material translation. The resulting forms occupy a space between reference and abstraction, asking to be handled, worn, used, or closely examined.
Reichert is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her practice is shaped by a longstanding relationship to the landscapes and built environments, with an interest in the ways people build lives around making. Her work looks closely at vernacular architecture, domestic spaces, regional histories, and the objects and materials through which ideas about place are carried forward.
This inquiry also extends to artist-built environments and the places artists shape around their lives and work. Reichert led the restoration and development of the James Castle House and co-founded The Atlanta School, an experimental art school and residency in the mountain town of Atlanta, Idaho. These experiences continue to inform her interest in how artists shape the places around them and how those places change and carry meaning over time.
Fool’s Gold, an ongoing project of Reichert’s studio developed with artist Alex Gartelmann, brings these ideas to the table through functional objects, small-batch production, and material experiments. Working between sculpture, design, and use, Fool’s Gold considers the everyday objects around which domestic and social life takes shape.
Reichert’s work is held in private collections across the United States and has been featured in The New York Times, Sunset Magazine, Hyperallergic, and Metalsmith, among others.