Rachel Wittels is an artist and art teacher from Rochester, New York. There she earned her BS/MS.ED in Art Education with a minor in technical theater costuming from Nazareth University. Relocating in 2017, Wittels spent four years as an emerging artist and art educator living in New York City. Teaching high school art at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music, Art, & Performing Arts, she primarily worked with students on fashion and digital arts, and fostered community partnerships with institutions such the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Marc Jacobs Fashion Company. Braided in with her teaching, Wittels’ studio practice is rooted in textile arts- most notably weaving, data visualization and their shared histories. Her recent exhibitions include Indiana University’s Time Constraint, at Kokomo Art Gallery, the Detroit Artist Market’s 2023 Annual Scholarship Exhibition, Cranbrook Academy of Art’s 2023 Graduate Art Exhibition at Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills Michigan, and the 68th Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York. She has also recently been featured in Detroit based artist publication Clearline Zine Issue 004: Air, Fashion, Action and Issue 4 of New Visionary Art Magazine hosted by New York’s Visionary Art Collective. After her 2021 relocation to Detroit, Michigan, she earned her MFA in Fiber at Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she now works as the Technology Coordinator, managing their Tc2 digital jacquard loom.