Nirit Levav

Nirit Levav, an artist and a designer, was born in 1963, married and a mother of four sons. Nirit graduated from the Parsons School of Design in New York with a degree in Fashion Design. She then proceeded to develop a career in fashion design specializing in bridal gowns.

During the years, after feeling the urge to create, Nirit realized she can't fulfill her herself or her calling by being solely a fashion designer. Parallel to her other occupations, Nirit started to explore creative avenues and broaden her education by studying jewelry, pottery, ceramic sculpture and iron sculpting.

Nirit acquired most of her early training as an artist by the age of 25 at her father's theatre sets workshop. This atelier, often visited by renowned sculptures and painters, is where Nirit would spend her vacations helping her father. Her father, the late Tzvi Levav, a seasoned professional who never believed in the impossible, taught his daughter welding, metal cutting and most important of all, not to fear experimenting with varied ideas and substances. This training was complemented by her mother, a crafts teacher and a hobbyist seamstress.

The variety of substances and crafts to which she was exposed from early childhood to late adolescence had a profound influence on Nirit's evolution as an artist. Her tendency and love for recycling go back to the mindset of her home and her father's workshop. Nothing was ever thrown away and everything could be used to make something else.

During her creative time, Nirit is constantly searching, inquiring and looking into the other, the different, the individual while experimenting with various materials that evoke her imagination. One of Nirit's passions is breathing life into matter. The manual labor involved in her creating process surprises and excites her simultaneously.

Nirit's early works emphasize her ability to create from a seemingly endless variety of recycled raw materials, metals such as rails, keys, old nails; and household items including light bulbs, mattresses, matches, clothespins, and natural materials like acorns, sunflower seeds, sea sand and gravel.

Recently, Nirit has decided to focus on a single raw material – recycled bicycle chains, and on a single theme - dogs. The choice of substance was accidental – during a random visit to a bike shop, she asked for the shop's accumulated junk and received a box full of bicycle chains. The chains have proven to be a wonderful compound to work with, encompassing both her love for metals as well as her enthusiasm in getting to know the hidden flexibility and tenderness of them combined with the versatile range of movement they possess.

The end result is a collection called "How Wow", different dogs constructed from the chains. When asked about her choice of dogs as a theme, Nirit confesses that dogs are indeed her favorite animal. In her opinion dogs are the closest animal to humans in their ability to express emotions. Although quite often, she is at a loss for words trying to define her process of creation she adds that for her it could be a moment of inspiration, during which she is deep inside herself, being swept away by something stronger than herself, and in flash of a moment, she can visualize the final outcome, make up her mind and execute.

Nirit believes that each person has a unique gift, and that if we look deep within ourselves and bring out the best in us, we can live in inner peace, influencing our surrounding both near and afar. For Nirit, art is a language without borders. Looking at a piece of art or a design transcends the artist, their nationality, gender, the color of their skin, education or past presentations. All that matters is whether the piece reaches out to the observers, moves them, and speaks the universal language that brings hearts together.