Rachel Yoder, who lives in a mountain valley near Nelson, British Columbia, has explored how working as a carpenter for 25 years has affected her art practice.

Now, the answer comes to life in a show called By This Means: Segment Ladders, which opens at the Fort Gallery this month.

In her upcoming exhibition, Yoder explores how the repetition of a ladder echoes the repetition of the years of her labour. The ladder empowered her to change the landscape by enabling her to work as a building carpenter.

However, as Yoder used the tools to change her environment, the tools themselves also changed her, she said.

They changed her body and her relationships, and later they changed her understanding of herself.

Now the tools no longer function as instruments for home-building; they are instruments for mark making.

Her paintings have been shown in a variety of alternative venues and have exhibited at Touchstones Museum of Art and History, Oxygen Art Centre, and Gallery 378 in Nelson, BC, as well as Hidden Garden Gallery, in New Denver, BC.