Patricia RAIN Gianneschi is a Visual Artist, Musician, Teacher, Gardener, Thinker, Activist, Moth-er, Wife, Sister, Daughter, Lover, Friend. She was born and raised in Chicago and is an artist working across Poetics. In her multimedia work, whether music or visual art, the intersection of social justice and spirituality is a thread that runs through all the disciplines of her work. As a teaching artist with students, from the classroom to the stage at the Art Institute of Chicago, she weaves a pedagogy with the same threads of spirituality and social justice. Her paintings, prints and drawings going back over 35+ years represent an artistic practice rich in ideas, con-tent, creativity and authenticity. RAIN is currently a founding member of the art collective: MOTHER ART: REVISITED
Educated in the Arts at University of California, Berkeley. RAIN holds two degrees from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a Master’s in Art Education, and a Master of Fine Arts. She has served as a teaching artist for the Chicago Public Schools for 22 years, and as adjunct faculty in Art Education at The School of the Art institute of Chicago.

STATEMENT
“Throughout diverse media, eras, and conceptual concerns, I remain an artist committed to spirituality and social change. Through my work, I teach and try to bring forth the spirit, my own, but also that of others as we learn just as much ourselves when we teach others. I employ the concepts of physicality in my paintings; materiality, paint and surface, print and voice, the plastic arts, and verbal expression; a painted or collaged thought, poem or song. The materials themselves become part of the experience. The mixing of the paint is a meditative experience; music is made when stretching a canvas, and later used in the recording studio as background for spoken word poetry. The textured papers, and thick fiber pastes are physical in nature, and the large canvas allows my whole body to become part of the process of encountering the creative spirit. The content in my work includes a sense of automatism and spontaneity through drawing, painting, visual and verbal poetry, illuminations and revelations. I am drawn to a symbolist aesthetic in image, spiritual and political in thought. I am also drawn towards the artists who strive to bring socio-political ideas into their abstract work.”