Growing up in Delaware, Reb had a natural inclination to creatively express herself, whether through sewing, dance, acting, singing, writing or drawing. Despite limited exposure to fine arts during her childhood, Reb took an inventive approach to her creative practice, whether sewing her own clothing, organizing battle of the bands, working three jobs to pay for dance classes, organizing plays at day camp, or building sculptures in her front yard. One could say her career started early when she won the New Castle County Parks and Recreation Safety Town Camp Drawing Contest at the age of four. The drawing was of a policeman with a horse, and her prize was a Mickey Mouse sprinkler set. 

After years of illegal downloads of indie rock bands during the 2000’s, Reb pursued her education at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY in 2006. Initially a journalism major, Reb switched to study Public Relations, where she ended up pursuing her own Independent Honors Study on the impact social media and emerging digital platforms changed the journalism and public relations industries. However, Reb never felt more at home than when she studied under artists James Lee, Laurie Fendrich, and Doug Hilson in drawing and painting classes to complete her Fine Arts minor. Reb showcased her paintings at Hofstra’s Calkins Hall Group Student Shows in 2009 and 2009. As a college student funding her education with student loans and part-time work study jobs, Reb would kick off her weekends in Manhattan and Brooklyn at MoMa’s Free Admission Fridays. Time spent at various NYC museums made an impact on Reb, including the Tim Burton retrospective, the Talk to Me exhibition and Marina Ambramovich’s retrospective at the MoMA, Urs Fischer at the New Museum, and Gustav Klimt at the Neue Galerie. 

In 2010, Reb graduated from Hofstra, moved to Brooklyn, and quickly started her career in advertising as a social marketing strategist working on iconic brands, viral content, and award-winning campaigns while freelance writing at night writing about cultural trends, digital technology and innovations in content. With a mountain of student debt and a demanding career in a volatile industry, Reb’s creative practice was deprioritized to creating drawings and paintings as holiday gifts for family until she studied under Erica Weiner in 2015 and was first exposed to oil painting techniques. She then fell back in love with the possibilities of painting and gained newfound discipline in her practice. 

Reb continued developing a series over the next three years The Importance of Everyday Objects celebrating the beauty of mundane objects, primarily food. She explored new mediums by apprenticing for soft sculpture artist Hein Koh and studying under illustrator Shawne Cooper. In 2019, the Guggenheim exhibition of Hilma af Klint was especially impactful to Carlson in understanding how nature can be depicted both abstractly through symbols and analytically as a keen observer, along with the realization of the emerging public awareness of female artists’ impact within art history. She began showing art locally within her new neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklym, joining a collective called Greenpoint Art Circle and beginning a new series of landscape paintings inspired by her family visits to South Dakota.  She organized the collective’s first group art show in early 2020 and set plans to participate in VAWAA to apprentice with abstract artist Tessa Maagdenberg in The Netherlands for that April. A few weeks later, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down NYC and effectively the entire country while Reb found out she was pregnant with her first child and lost her consulting job. 

Tapping into the same ingenuity she had as a child, Reb launched Mad Focused, a marketing consultancy for working creatives and continued painting at home. Her photography work Views from Inside was including in The Art Student’s League of New York’s virtual exhibition “Life Under the Pandemic Moon”. Following the birth of her son, Reb moved to the coastal area of Fairfield, CT with her husband and new baby to work remotely for a global agency, while still consulting and pursuing a creative practice among the Bridgeport, CT arts community while leasing a studio at the iconic Nest Arts Factory, participating in the Nest Arts Factory’s Open Studios during Bridgeport Arts Trail in 2021. In 2022 Reb became an active participant in the Artist/Mother Community, now Thrive Together Network.

Reb currently lives in Austin, TX, further developing her body of work including Industriascapes and Maternal Orbits. She continues to work in digital marketing and serves as a board member of local non-profit organization The Gallery ATX.

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