Meet Brittany Lombari

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brittany Lombari.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Brittany. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
As many artists, the location of my upbringing has a large influence on my work. I was born in Guam, spent most of my childhood in Orlando, FL, and moved to LA in 2004. The cultural experiences between my two hometowns, Orlando and Los Angeles, largely fed into the concepts of my early work.

In 2006, my family and I decided to volunteer to help build homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. It was there where I had my first visceral experience creating. As a 14-year-old, I was trusted to use major power tools to help build houses for victims. The whole experience blew my mind; it was thrilling because it felt a bit dangerous. I recognized my muscles for the first time, and I felt strong! Discovering my abilities and passion to create was a very physical experience that continues to be recreated with every sculpture I make.

In 2010, I started my college career in the Community College system. I traveled to Italy and Florida to study art and eventually I decided to attend the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and obtained my BFA in 2014. I refined my carpentry skills by spending the past three years building movie sets and museum exhibits. My fiancé and I recently moved to Hawthorne, CA where my studio is also located.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I don’t think anyone’s journey is completely smooth. In the beginning, I had to be creative to find a place to work. At first, I used a Public Storage facility as a studio space and have moved my studio location almost every year since.

And aside from the standard lack of funding and space most emerging artists deal with, I’ve had difficulty trusting myself. It has been a process to learn how to listen to my gut and step through decisions with confidence. With anything though, it is all about practice.

We’d love to hear more about what you do.
While growing up in Orlando, I was fortunate enough to experience amusement parks almost every day. Looking back, this highly influenced my early work. I had the realization that my childhood was a mystical façade. I moved to LA in my teens, and the culture seemed to be participating in another form of façade centering on vanity.

After graduating with a BFA from the Art Center in Pasadena, CA, my work started to focus on surfaces involving lots of plastic materials and resins. These works focus on ideas of desire, they are shiny, hard-shelled, seductive, and reflective in their materiality. My practice was feeding into and playing with the vanity of both the art object and its observer. The work is luscious, sexy, and seductive all while being made from cheap plastic.

Recently, my work has evolved into looking at the opposite of facades. I’m currently creating tiled mosaics from wood cast in resin. My work investigates how people derive personal truths and values that paint their world. Whether through spiritual beliefs, science, or psychology, humans create a personal understanding of reality. My work is influenced as I investigate those different perspectives. Using symmetry and forms that reflect Rorschach tests, my practice excavates the human psyche to reevaluate the origin of individual truths.

What were you like growing up?
I was a very hyperactive kid. I was fortunate enough to have very supportive parents that enabled me to be involved in as many extracurriculars as possible, mostly physical activities.

A weekend would include running from singing class to hula dancing class, to some other sort of class which seemed to produce a huge curiosity and fascination in learning. I was stimulated and challenged all the time.

I found so many subjects and processes interesting that when I realized that I could make a career studying any topic I wanted for the rest of my life, I was married to the idea of being an artist.

Contact Info:

• Website: brittanylombari.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @brittanylombari

Image Credit:
Stephanie Klotz, Joshua Schaedel

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