ART LIFE ART ++ LIFE Rebekah Graves Light Sculptures
ARTIST BIO
Rebekah Graves is an artist and designer who creates sculptural lighting and is based in Charlottesville, VA. She sculpts pure, organic forms in porcelain and casts them using Japanese and Nepalese hand-made papers. She studied Environmental Science, Architecture, and Studio Art at the University of Virginia and is represented by the Martin Nash Showroom in the Atlanta Decorative Arts Center in Buckhead Atlanta, GA. She is available for private commissions, special events lighting, and creative installations.
www.rebekahgraves.com
DESCRIBE A DAY IN THE LIFE OF REBEKAH.... My day begins at 6:30 with an alarm set to classical music on public radio that surprisingly enough, doesn’t wake me immediately. I allow up to 2 snoozes, then it’s off to start the kettle for my coffee ritual with a purists Chemex carafe. I enjoy simple, beautiful, and functional wares made of natural materials to connect through simple acts of doing with the world in which I am engaged. Back to coffee..I then get my daughter, Zuma Belle, and her lunch, ready for school, rush out the door to drop her off to then return home for some quiet time by my woodstove before heading in to the studio. The mornings are my favorite time there, it’s calm and peaceful, and the light is heavenly as it pours through the giant schoolhouse windows. The way the light interacts with the room is a morning mediation in and of itself, as it falls across softly torn paper edges, wet porcelain in fingers, wooden work table and sim-
ple, practical hand tools, all of which know my hands as well as anyone. I feel this time is the most sacred part of my day. It is an arriving to ones own home, where the materials and the space in which they inhabit are so intimate to me. I know these materials well and love to make using them, so this room is not only filled with light, it is filled with unbounded potential, and that to me is nothing short of magic. Everyone should have ‘a room of one’s own,’ the freedom within those walls has cracked me open many times over.
SOMETHING INTERESTING... I am still amazed that what I do is work, it is so much more play for me..it’s hard work too, but it doesn’t seem hard. I love my job, and that makes all the difference in the world.
HOW DID YOU COME TO THIS CREATIVE MEDIUM? I have always loved warm, golden light, stemming from a childhood spent in nature, Virginia red clay became fine porcelain in later years, but the tactile quality and my pull to these mediums have been with me for as long as I can remember, as a child growing up on a rural farm outside of Floyd, VA. From the time I started working with handmade paper, I have been drawn to the lovely way it diffuses light and lends such a warm texture. I also find this spectrum of light to be emotionally calming, as well as aesthetically pleasing. I began the creation of my process by painting on paper and building light boxes about 10 years ago. It then evolved into sculpting in porcelain when a 3-dimensional project came to me and I had to figure out how to make it. And so a light sculpture was born, and its name was Honeycomb.
DO YOU HAVE A DREAM PROJECT? I am actually in the process of my very own dream project. I am an artist, an entrepreneur, a builder, a mother, a homemaker, a go getter, a fire starter, an adventurer, a lover and a friend, and what allows all of these to exist simultaneously is the fact that I am a dreamer, and never stop dreaming, and that dream evolves and grows and I grow with it and to ever think I have it figured out at any one point would be absurd, I am totally winging it, day by day, and that is my art of living. I will never forget my mother and I calling each other on the regular, to ‘dream a little dream’, and we would just roll with big dreams and it was like positive affirmation for each other, because no dream was too big. We were always so supportive of our dreams. I feel she taught me a good bit about living in these discussions, because I never back down from a dream, I find out how to make it work and I go right for it.
A STORY...
I once worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, living on a wildlife refuge on the outer banks of Virginia. I watched and counted birds, could kayak to work, began and ended my day with surfing if the waves were up, and was the closest I have ever lived with my wild spirit and Mother Nature in union.
‘That time was like never, and like always. So we go there, where nothing is waiting; we find everything waiting there’ ~Pablo Neruda
morning... coffee noon... tacos night... sweetness happiness... love in all directions, beginning with the self preposterous... control fear... resisting love... living extravagance... NYC comedy... always, in everything work... play most interesting thing in your purse... lip balm collection in another life, you’d be... Bonanza Jellybean lucky charm... my mothers wedding ring prized possession... my daughter, Zuma Belle one wish... to live a full life your most marked characteristic... I am a Manifesting Generator