We were lucky to catch up with Adriana Marvelli recently and have shared our conversation below.

Adriana, appreciate you joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

My first creative passion was as a professional dancer. I started dancing at the age of 5 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where I’m originally from. I always loved the power of dance, and how you can convey emotions through your body movements and expressions. I specialized in contemporary and jazz and danced for 18 years. I appeared as a dancer in various TV shows and productions and participated in international exercise videos, and video clips of grammy winning records. At age 18 I started as a dance instructor and choreographer to children 10 – 14 years old. I loved to perform, participate in auditions, and be on stage; for I could dance for hours. Every December we would perform for a week as a dance company at the Hotel Nacional, a mid-century hotel and resort in Rio de Janeiro, designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. This represented my first connection to Brazilian Modernism architecture. The school had 400 students and there were 1,400 seats in the hotel’s theater, and it sold out every night. It was a fun ritual, from meeting the make-up artist to the warm-ups to dress rehearsals to the photo shoots and, of course, the big shows. Dance was such a big part of my life, and it gave me structure and an understanding of how hard you have to work in order to achieve your goals.

Although I loved being a creative at that time, I also understood that I lived in a country with a very uncertain economy. As I matured through my teens, my family insisted that I needed to go to college to pursue a “real” career, holding the belief that dance was just a hobby. Once I realized I had to pursue a conventional degree in a professional field of study I decided to study Law, a five-year degree coupled with Economics and Political Science. I lived at home with my parents, a circumstance that is very common in developing countries where the economy is fragile.

I still found a way to keep dancing and performing, but once I graduated, passed the Brazilian equivalent to the bar exam and was hired at the tax and copyright law firm at which I was employed as an intern… it was a done deal…. I got myself boxed into an office job that I did not enjoy very much with frequent visits to the courthouse. Although aspects of the job were intellectually stimulating, I remember telling myself it was the wrong fit and had to find a way to leave because I recognized that I was meant to pursue a creative path professionally.

At that point my goal in life was to move from Rio to live in New York City, a place I visited many times during my dance career. Over breaks while still a student, I would prepare trip itineraries, sell the package to other dancers and together we would sublet an apartment in Manhattan for a month each January during summer break in Brazil. We would take 2 to 3 dance classes per day, from contemporary to tap to classic ballet. At night we would watch Broadway shows and spend all the money we saved from teaching dance on dance wear, new music, video tapes, dance shoes, etc. to bring back to the dance school in Rio. I loved New York, it just felt right! I wanted to be free and live the American Dream. I had made my decision: I was going to follow my heart and immigrate to America.

I was logistically ready and prepared to leave Rio, having left a suitcase with my winter clothes at a friend’s house in the city on the last trip as a tourist, but mentally it was getting a bit more challenging than I anticipated. So, I left Rio de Janeiro and I immigrated to New York. At that time, my focus was to integrate in American society and find a way to financially support myself in this new adventure. I had decided to start a new life in a new country by myself at age 23. It was not going to be easy. I had to quickly improve my English skills and there was no internet or cell phones at the time so communicating with new acquaintances was far more challenging than today. It seemed that I worked all the time and had no time or money for dance classes. That marked the end of my dance career.

It’s fair to say that my love of dance brought me to this country. Fast forward to today, I am celebrating my 30-year anniversary of immigrating to the United States. I am happy as a creative, as an Interior Designer and Entrepreneur. And dance? It wasn’t till I started volunteering as an art docent at a Getty Museum in LA that I reconnected with dance. After spending a lot of time in the galleries surrounded by paintings and sculptures, I started having feelings once again for the performing arts. I was curious and intrigued with body language and natural beauty embodied in the sculptures, and I started imagining the models and dancers who were the subject of the art works. The mindful training program had a focus on seeing art with all your senses and naturally I gravitated to movements. It was last Fall that I let the dancer inside me re-emerge during a creative and empowering photography session. As a creative, regardless of the medium, it’s all about the energy you release into the world.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Adriana, I’m originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I first moved to New York and then to Los Angeles. I have had different creative careers and it feels like a natural progression in life, where you keep growing, evolving and adapting with the hope to always be the best version of yourself, feel fulfilled and enjoy a happy life. With that in mind, I went back to school in my 30s, graduated from the UCLA Interior Design program and went on to earn a master’s degree in Interior Architecture from Cal Poly Pomona. I am Principal Interior Designer at Marvelli Studio, a boutique interior design firm that specializes in interior and exterior design, styling and decor with plants.

Living the California lifestyle, where we spend a lot of the time outdoors, I started having fun with gardening and landscape design in the last few years. It started in a very organic way in our home, where I live with my husband and our twin teenagers. Our landscape is a living collection of plants, constantly growing and evolving. I feel grateful to be a creative in this beautiful environment and to share my designer lifestyle with my family. It is a dream come true to work, play and live design.

My inspiration comes from my lived experience from Tropical Brazilian Modernism, to Mid-Century California Modern. I am a modernist at heart and growing up in Rio de Janeiro where I was surrounded by Brazilian Modernism was magical. I experienced Oscar Niemeyer’s architecture as well as Burle Marx landscape projects in the open public spaces of Rio. I can still remember playing on the beautiful sidewalks of Copacabana with the basalt black and white Portuguese stones, which I still do when I visit with my family.

Mindful design for modern living is my motto. My passion is to create beautiful and functional spaces incorporating plants and works of art that evoke good feelings and emotions. To create beautiful and comfortable environments that reflect the personality and lifestyle of dwellers. The same way we want to be our best version of ourselves, we should also care for our homes, have them clean, uncluttered, functional and beautiful. A home should be a positive extension and reflection of self.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I was working a crazy corporate job, at a record label in a high-rise building in Manhattan during my late 20s. I had no family in the country, a handful of new friends and no mentor to guide me professionally. I took all the actions an immigrant must do in order to fully integrate into the culture and society, and before I realized I made it into the corporate rat race… But then it hit me… Is this for me? Is this where I see myself for years to come? No. I knew deep down inside of me it was time for a life change. Time to leave my job and go experience other industries, possibilities, return to school and also have time to meet my soulmate. I always thought about moving to California. Los Angeles was a faraway dream when I lived in Rio de Janeiro. Suddenly, from New York it sounded tangible.

Locked in an office building waving a flag for a cause that no longer interested me, I had put myself into a box that I recognized I had to get out of. I wasn’t referring to money, money would follow. I wasn’t referring to intellectual stimulation either. I worked with super smart and creative people at the record label, big artists, big shows, big fun. Work was consuming all my time, and my free personal time was being used to decompress from work. It was hard to justify leaving such a lucrative job that provide such stable paychecks.

That got me thinking about leaving the city all together, in search of a better quality of life. I spent most of my weekends out of town, winters snowboarding in Vermont and summers at the beach in the Hamptons. I knew I had also outgrown the city in which I was living, and I wanted to find my soulmate and raise a family. I realized it was up to me to make the first move and take my journey cross country.

I was building up courage, with a mix of excitement for what’s to come and the more I meditated on this the more it felt right. I gave two months’ notice at the record label and, in response, my boss asked me who the heck gives two months’ notice? I do, I said. That’s the time I gave myself to find a job in Los Angeles. Ultimately, I was offered an executive position at a snowboard company running their music and lifestyle business and they relocated me to Santa Monica. The record label sent me off with a beautiful goodbye party culminating in a limousine ride to the airport. And so I departed New York City and finished another chapter in my life.

I am happy I took that bold move. I trusted my gut, my instincts, myself. I was not happy with my life. Something felt off, the overall situation in which I found myself no longer fulfilled me. It was time to dive into self-exploration and go West to find the California living lifestyle.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I feel very fortunate about the opportunity to inspire others through volunteering in Arts & Educations, which to me feels like an energy exchange, and this inspires me. To feel strongly about a cause in which freely give your time and effort requires a substantial commitment. I also see it as a beautiful opportunity for personal growth, to experience life’s emotions in different ways, and to give back.

I’ve been volunteering as an art docent for the past 10 years. As an interior designer and entrepreneur, I have the ability to manage my schedule, so I decided to volunteer in Arts & Education once a week. As an art teacher volunteer at LAUSD I saw firsthand how much positive impact art and design can make on the development of our youth. I feel that I can inspire young people and plant a seed that may help them understand their true nature and help them succeed in life. Feeling so much gratitude, with the hope to inspire curiosity and creativity and to foster a sense of belonging in Art, I applied to the Getty Museum art docent K-12 school program. I was fortunate to be accepted. I underwent an amazing year of training and started teaching art in the galleries to Los Angeles elementary students. For many students, it was their first time in an art museum. And some students are new to this country and learning English. The idea of volunteering and inspiring the youth of the city was very exciting. It is so rewarding to inspire other Latin immigrants like me so that they may enjoy and appreciate art. My mission was to expose all of the young students to art; make it approachable and fun and, ultimately, spark a recognition within young people that art is for everyone.

Volunteering is part of my journey as a creative. I took the time to study the art, and to attend lectures and events to learn the museum’s pedagogy in order to better communicate and teach art to the students. Volunteering and helping others are wonderful for my mind, body and soul. I learned with the young students to hold onto my own vulnerability and spontaneity in order to feel young at heart.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://marvellistudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adrianamarvellidesign/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriana-marvelli-823323263/

Image Credits
All photos by Adriana Marvelli Dance Photo by Marisa Leigh