Hello, and thank you for your interest in my work. My name is Emily Rand Wilson, and I work professionally as Emily Rand. My practice examines how visual, historical, and rhetorical systems shape perception and structure social and physical environments. I am particularly interested in the ethical and heuristic dimensions of image-making: how stories are produced, circulated, and interpreted, and how these processes influence collective memory and everyday experience.​

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Earlier in my career, I examined gendered narratives within Southern evangelical culture, focusing on how visual and rhetorical systems shaped identity, behavior, and belonging. This foundation informs my broader interest in how cultural narratives organize perception and structure social environments. My professional work with historical maps and prints further defined this direction; even when the written language was inaccessible, their visual systems -- borders, landscapes, scientific diagrams, and depictions of social relations -- revealed how images record cultural priorities and reflect political and ideological decisions.

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This perspective shapes my studio practice, which analyzes the relationship between place, narrative, and visual representation. I focus on rural and suburban Texas as environments marked by expansion, erasure, and shifting definitions of community. Using imagery such as highways, uniform subdivisions, bucolic pockets, and domestic or natural fragments, I examine how built environments influence psychological and cultural experience. My BFA in Printmaking from Baylor University (‘21) and MA in Art and Technology from the University of Oklahoma (‘24) support this work both through training in craft-based processes and research into digital image systems, algorithms, and media circulation. I am able to consider, in a uniquely interdisciplinary capacity, how different modes of making shape attention, interpretation, and memory.

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Currently, I am interested in how images contribute to narrative formation, particularly in environments where automated systems influence visibility, information flow, and public memory. I approach drawing, print, digital imagery, and observational work as tools for examining how stories become embedded in place and how visual culture either reinforces or challenges dominant narratives.

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I aim to produce work that encourages careful looking and invites viewers to consider the structural forces underlying familiar environments. My goal is not to direct interpretation but to establish visual conditions that make these dynamics a little more comprehensible to both myself and others.

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I also sometimes just make things that are fun and bring joy. (-: