We caught up with the brilliant and insightful LILIANA VALDEZ a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi BERNZ WOOD, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Creating with Bernz Wood has brought many meaningful projects for us. Mostly people order pieces of loved ones, memorials, couples or pet portraits. We have had the honor of creating many meaningful pieces, it’s one of the best feelings as a creator/artist. The most recent one that made an impact for us was this year 2023 to a fellow artist/musician he asked us to create a piece with the image of his son, we later learned that his son had passed away, it was a memorial piece. The image itself was beautiful, it captured his face and his beautiful long hair. When we completed the piece with his name; because of our schedules we kept missing the time to give him the piece. When that moment came it was quite emotional, all of it was said when he saw the image burnt onto to the wood, his eyes told us everything and moved us emotionally. Moments like this is when we are reminded of the impact we can have in people’s life and how we can give back with what we create.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We are Bernz Wood we create art from hand burning images onto wood or create art pieces that can be used from day to day. At the moment there is two of us, there is me Lilian I hand burn the images onto wood, then there is Bernardo, my older brother creator of Bernz Wood. Berna created Bernz Wood in 2019 as his side hobby and eventually he wanted to make it into a small business. Bernado would build his own bed, he built his German Sheperd’s house and would create projects for friends and family. Our dad works a lot with wood it’s one of many things that he works on and is quite talented, we naturally fell in love with creating with wood. Bernardo passed away in 2020 and I felt the need to continue what he started and keep him and his legacy alive through our artwork and the pieces we create. Most if not all the pieces we create are a reflection of what we love, we love things that are useful physically and visually have a purpose, for us the work we create is something that we already use ourselves and we want to share it with others. Most people that come to us for a project know how beautiful and precious wood is and they want to add to that beauty, and we can provide that for anyone. We take pride in our work, we burn our images by hand, and we share videos on our social media of them. We also do a lot of custom work, for other small businesses, it can be creating hand made stamps or hand burning their logo onto a wooden display etc. We try our best to do a little bit of everything.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For us other than creating is connecting and sharing with others. This still is very much the beginning of our journey we are still learning about the behind the scenes of it all. At this moment, connecting and sharing with others is very rewarding, when we vend, we get to hear stories of people and their art and what drew them to ours. We love all kinds of stuff related to music, nature, outdoors and our art reflects that. We have had people who share facts about animals and their pets, facts about insects, wood so many stories and connections that we wouldn’t have had without vending. Connecting and sharing with other artist/vendors/creators as well and how they navigate through it all has definitely helped us strive to become more aware and intentional.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

From the beginning it has been to keep Bernardo’s creation and legacy alive through our art. He created Bernz Wood and we will continue what he started through our work and through people who want a Bernz Wood piece.   

Contact Info:

• Website: bernzwood.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/bernz.wood

Image Credits
Jack Black. Bailey Sarian. Whang Od