Dreaming in Ladakh - Digital Collage
Leh at Night - Digital Collage
The imagery for my prints and paintings draw inspiration from the lens through which I see the world. I don’t seek to illustrate a single event or experience, but rather I combine impressions of the people, places and things around me to create composite images that express my individual point of view.
For this residency, with the theme “What to do with Technology?”, I decided to break from my usual practice of oil painting on wood panels. I created two digital collage prints, “Leh at Night” and “Dreaming in Ladakh.” With these images, I hope to share the beauty and mystery of my experience in this breathtaking and soul-stirring place.
THINKING HANDS- Nature, Embodiment, and The Human Being in the Age of Technology
In June 2026 sixteen artists from across India and around the globe gathered for two weeks of immersive engagement and art-making in the vast, rugged Himalayan landscape of Ladakh for the 10th Art for Change International Artist Residency on the theme ‘What to do with Technology: Human Being in An Age of Tech.’ What exactly is technology? What does it mean to be human? And why does that question feel particularly urgent right now? More specifically what does Ladakh, its landscape, its people, its centuries of life at the edge of survival, reveal about what humans truly need to flourish? These are just a few of the questions we took up in this time of living, learning, and making art together. The title of this exhibition, Thinking Hands, was inspired by the book The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture by Julani Pallasmaa (2009). It reflects the ways that we as human beings, and artists in particular, come to understand things more fully through making and our bodily engagement with the world of which we are a part. The works you see here, then, reflect that process as we pondered these things together.
—Rachel Hostetter Smith, PhD
Curator and Mentor, 2026 International Artist Residency Art for Change
Gilkison Distinguished Professor of Art, Taylor University, USA
