Rachel Blythe Udell works with heirloom clothing, salvaged fabrics, and other upcycled materials. She recrafts her materials into soft sculptural bodies and other worldly “habitats”. Udell describes her creative process as, “threading together identity, history, and personal experience.”

Her use of vintage lace, yarn, and scraps of familial clothing reference memory and the passage of time. The work forms through accumulated layering in strange and colorful ways. The soft biomorphic sculptures are a lively contrast to the industrial features of the museum’s lobby space. Organic forms are crocheted and stitched together – traditionally craft techniques associated with domesticity and “women’s work”.  This woman’s work defies the centuries-old debate between what is art and what is craft. Instead, Udell’s work joyfully renders the question moot.

Curated by Erica Loustau, Adjunct Deputy for Design Integration

Lobby Installation

Rachel Blythe Udell works with fibrous materials to create biomorphic sculptures, embroidered textile collages, and installations. She is the recipient of a 2023 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for sculpture. Her most recent installation, Hypnagogic Habitat, was on view at the Philadelphia International Airport from February - August, 2023. In 2022 her work was juried into the showcase section of Art14C, an international art fair in Jersey City, NJ. Udell has had a solo show at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ and exhibited in a three-person show at the Perkins Center for the Arts in Collingswood, New Jersey. She has created installations for the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation at Lemon Hill Mansion, as well as The Atlantic Highlands Arts Council Gallery in Monmouth County, NJ. Her work was selected for inclusion in the New Jersey Arts Annual in 2018 and the Fiber Philadelphia International Biennial in 2012. Udell graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in Art History, and has studied art and art therapy at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives and works in Mantua, New Jersey.