Setting the Stage

Working behind the scenes, Rachel Prochaska is painting her career one brick at a time.

Rachel Prochaska comes by her creativity the old-fashioned way.

Prochaska grew up on a farm in Ada, Kansas. Although she and her siblings tended to chores every day, they also had plenty of free time to fill with their own activities. So instead of watching television or playing video games, they got creative.

“We made tree houses and pretend stores,” Prochaska remembers. “We built dollhouses from scratch. That’s just the kind of thing we did, I guess, because we didn’t know any differently.”

Prochaska still fills her time with such playful endeavors—but on a much larger scale now. Instead of designing dollhouses, she designs sets and scenes for theatrical productions. Instead of painting pretend stores, she paints faux finishes in real homes. Instead of playing in tree houses, she drives around Wichita with her brushes, rollers, rags and pans loaded in her Windstar minivan, hopping from one job to the next.

Such is the life of a freelance artist. Each day brings something new for Prochaska, whether it’s painting background scenes for Music Theatre of Wichita, building sets for Center for the Arts or designing murals on the walls of homes and businesses. Such versatility, Prochaska says, may be the secret to her rising success.

“I know artists who say, ‘I don’t do this or I don’t do that,’” she says. “I don’t have that attitude. I’ll do it. I think that’s what helped me be able to make it.”

That, and the portfolio she takes along almost everywhere she goes. In it are pictures of the theatrical sets she designed and built while earning her bachelor’s degree in theatre at Sterling College. There’s the drawing of a set from the production of “Jellybean Conspiracy” at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, shaped to fit the show’s title. There’s the screen she painted to cover a baptismal font at a church, the Noah’s Ark mural she created at a local store, and a henna design she drew on the glass doors of a display case.

She waited until her portfolio was full of fine work examples before calling on Music Theatre of Wichita last year. “It’s such a wonderful organization,” Prochaska says. “It’s really professional. So I took my portfolio in to see what would happen. That’s what you have to do; you have to relentlessly self-promote.”

It’s paid off. Prochaska spent the summer of 2005 as a Music Theatre of Wichita “prop tart”—designing or creating everything from plates of shrimp to severed heads. “It was like craft day at vacation Bible school,” she says with a laugh. This summer, she was promoted to painter; when the carpenters have a piece of scenery ready, it’s her job to paint it. “All I [did] all summer [was] paint,” she says.

Painting isn’t what Prochaska originally planned to do. When she enrolled at Sterling College as a theatre major, her plan was to be more of an onstage presence than a behind-the-scenes player. Then she found a work-study position as the theatre’s carpenter. Although she often auditioned for roles as well, she was always involved in set design and creation—and it didn’t take long for her to fall in love with the creative process. After graduation, she got married and worked in a coffee shop, designing and building sets on the side. Before long, she decided to set out on her own as an artist.

“That job just wasn’t doing it for me creatively,” she says. “I had painting jobs on the side, which I liked. So I decided to go out on my own and give it a try.”

Prochaska, who is now 27, admits that she is still learning and working her way up as an artist. But already, she has found great satisfaction in following her creative spirit. “I’m very satisfied with what I do,” she says. “I’m happy that I can provide a service that people need. And at the same time, I can express myself and paint for a living.”