Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to GaiBi Vollbracht . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

GaiBi , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

One of my clearest childhood memories of creating art is of a cool Montana evening in Paradise Valley, I had set myself up with a large pad of paper and a couple of pencils, determined to draw every tree on the mountain in front of me. The mountains there are magnificent, forever reminding me of how small we are in the grand scheme of things while simultaneously singing to the immense possibility of our own grandness. I remember that evening, drawing my mountains and their garments of trees in a trance-like space, a space of infinite possibilities, this beautiful relationship between the mountains, trees, and my pencil.
We all draw, when we are young, with sticks in the dirt, scribbling with crayons, we learn to write our names and draw our families, and some of just us never stop. I spent decades drawing, with pen and ink, creating worlds of my own. People and animals sometimes, but mostly plants, the plant world has been my muse since those early days.

One day I was trying to paint on a piece of wood using only wood stains, but the colors wouldn’t stay where I put them, they bled out of the lines. My younger sibling suggested I try wood burning those lines, to make a groove that the stain couldn’t bleed past. It worked beautifully and I fell in love. I fell in love with the slowness of the work, the smell of the wood burning, and the effect of creating images with fire.

Pyrography, pyro meaning fire, and graphy is a method of writing or drawing. Pyrography is the art of wood burning. The most essential skills of this medium are the ability to draw, which we all have, and patience, which we don’t all have. I have always drawn but I am still learning the patience part. And of course, this medium is very much about the wood. I needed to learn about the wood itself, to learn more about my trees. Some wood is soft like pine and burns quickly, while other wood is hard, like maple or bamboo, and needs very high heat. In order to get clean lines in either of these kinds of wood, the pyrographer must move very slowly and pause often for the pen to reheat for it cools while moving across the wood. It has been good medicine for me to learn to go slowly, to use the right amount of heat for the kind of wood I am using. I wear a mask so as not to breathe all the smoke and ventilate the studio well. I seal the pieces with coconut oil and beeswax, it makes all the colors of the wood pop and protects the wood from drying out. I learned these things over time, as the need to know arose. I don’t know anyone else who is doing this work near me but there is a big community of folks online and we all teach each other things.
I am not sure the process of learning this or any skill can be sped up in any way other than devoting more time to it. And I believe in the deep old beauty of slow things that take time to learn and integrate. They become part of you and instead of them just being something you know how to do they are alive in you, and you are in relationship with them.

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?

I am a queer lady living in northern New Mexico with my husband and three kids. I love figuring out how to make things with my hands, I love to be able to see and feel the things that I make. I used to teach pottery and kids art classes, I paint murals, make paper jewelry and sculptures, I love creating Halloween costumes for my kids, I sew, and I used to roof houses. I have painted sets for plays, hennaed pregnant bellies and I am currently learning how to build furniture and remodel houses.

For the last few years, I have been focusing on sharing my pyrography. I create functional art by wood burning designs into earrings, cutting boards, stools, boxes, really anything made of wood. The majority of the wood that I use is upcycled, I am a scavenger, who sees the beauty in lost and discarded things and burns new life into them. Often a beautiful piece of wood is hidden under old ugly varnish and just needs to be liberated. It’s really exciting to me to save these pieces of wood, our trees, from being thrown in the dump. They deserve more respect than that.
My designs are inspired by the plant world’s ability to grow in and around everything. I love the juxtaposition of clean, defined patterns entwined with wild growing things, the place where the spirit expresses its sacred design through the organized and the wild.
The pieces I make are all originals, and each one is handmade.
I run my small business out of my new studio (the garage), I do pop-up art shows locally and ship pieces internationally. I love to collaborate and create custom pieces bringing your ideas to life.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I have always made stuff, I paint, and paper mache, I nail things together and hot glue them. I make things out of paper and wood and wire and ink. But for most of my life I didn’t believe I was a “real artist.” I had acquired the belief that be a real artist, one had to be creating work that was painful, emotional, political and revolutionary, or it had to be technically difficult to execute. We have the image of the starving artist, tormented by their lives and from this place they create the great works of our human race. Since creating things was easy and fun for me, since I was not plumbing the depths of my soul for inspiration every time, since I was not using my art as activism, I believed I was not a real artist, I would call myself crafty.

I have three children and for all those early years I found it almost impossible to dedicate any time to making “art.” But I sowed costumes and paper mached masks. I made wands and wings and coloring books and pinatas. We just made all the things that we couldn’t afford. Then I started making earrings and cards, small things that I could make in small moments. I gave them all away and people loved them, the art that I created made them feel loved. I began to see that my way of art is about sharing love and beauty, that it is about creating something from nothing, that my way of art is about slowing down enough to make something by hand and offer it up with so much care.

We live in a world that tells up to produce more faster, to constantly buy new things and tells us we are only good enough if we are the best of the best. The biggest lesson for me in choosing to make and share my art is that I don’t have to be something I am not. If I continue to create from a place of joy and curiosity, if I continue to show up and be me then I am an artist and I have beat the system.
My emotional, political, and revolutionary art is to move slowly in a fast world. To take the time to make things with my own hands, and offer them up with love. I have realized that it doesn’t matter what we create, it is simply the act of creating that makes real artists.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I feel blessed to have grown up in a home steeped in the arts. My mom has an incredible eye for color, she curates warm bright spaces, she has a natural talent for both watercolors and writing. My dad is a writer and told us silly but deep stories at bedtime, he writes poetry and has a handful of books published. My brother would spend the whole day preparing for his newscast at night in the living room. and my other two siblings were the stars of every theatrical production in our town, so we spent a lot of time at the theater. They took us to the opera and always made sure we had all the art supplies we could need. When I was 15 my parents bought me a wheel and kiln to make pottery at home. At 17 they let me move to Mexico to attend an art school. I was never once told to stop making art and focus on something more meaningful. My mom really taught me that I could make anything, she made all of our Halloween costumes, all of our costumes for plays, she showed us how to make Valentine’s day cards for everyone at school, she repainted the house and cooked delicious food, when I think about isn’t that truly the most important kind of art? the lived felt, integrated allowance of creativity, the everyday art of being alive and interacting with this world. It is been very empowering to me to look at or think of something I want to make and then just go try it out. I know that making art brings us into a deeper relationship with ourselves and the gift of that is priceless. My partner and I have brought that same philosophy to our children, that if you can dream it you can make it, if it lights you up then go for it. My partner is a musician, a chef, and an incredible writer. Our house is a beautiful mess of projects. My kids see the bin of recycling as art supplies. I have an actor, a dancer, a builder. They are writers and painters and cooks. You asked me what is the most rewarding part of being an artist and my answer this – to be connected to my planet, to my family and to myself more deeply is the greatest reward of being an artist.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @wild.hearts.pyrograhy
• Other: Etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/WildHeartsPyrography

Image Credits
Feature photo credit – Sheena Chakeres All other photos taken by me – GaiBi Vollbracht