A petite and vibrant mother of four who barely looks older than her 17-year-old daughter, multimedia artist Rebecca Braziel grew up in Waltourville, a teeny community outside of Hinesville. Despite having no art classes in school and having no exposure to museums or galleries (“There were ten of us – we never went anywhere!”) she always knew that she wanted to be an artist. When an older sister enrolled in Historic Preservation at SCAD, the younger sibling was exultant to realize art could be an option for her own future.

Braziel enrolled in Fashion in SCAD, but her academic advisor suggested the young mother who had become pregnant at age 19 and who had always seemed more intrigued by the fabric than by the construction of the garment, to follow in her own footsteps and switch her major to Fibers.

She graduated with a BFA in Fibers from SCAD in 2008 and today has a practice that includes fiber installations, mixed media sculptures, and paintings on paper. She was recently featured in the “Protégé” group show at SCAD’s Gutstein Gallery, so thoughtfully curated by Ben Tollefson and Brittany Richmond.

Braziel says she was honored to show alongside her Fibers mentor Liz Sargent. It was a celebration “of the creative and professional relationships that grow and evolve between student and teacher at SCAD and beyond. She gave me the freedom to blossom creatively. Her assignments were about art for art’s sake, and up to that point, they had felt very controlled. I had things I wanted to talk about.”

After graduation, Braziel worked in her family’s business while raising her children and had a short stint in Louisiana as a middle school art teacher and assistant to product-label collage artist Troy Duga and to multimedia artist and sculptor Stephanie Patton. Following her ex-husband’s graduation from engineering school, they moved to Houston in 2013.

With a toddler and a newborn, Braziel said she made art “that was an expression of anxiety. It was my first time living in a place with no green space and I was inside a lot. I missed my family. I couldn’t get a job. I didn’t know anyone, but I truly believe you always need a space in your home to create. It’s your studio, even if it’s just a desk in your kitchen.”

While in Georgia she had been working on beaded pieces inspired by a wildfire she’d seen near her grandmother’s home. Planning to continue that work in Texas, she went to a bead store for supplies and while at the checkout, heard about another wildfire outside of Austin. She went to see it and subsequently started creating monochromatic works out of paper, portraying the white mushrooms that sprung up out of the blackened and charred bark of trees by taking a blade and slicing the surface of the paper.

Eventually, Braziel earned a prestigious six-month residency at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. (Here we go off on somewhat of a tangent bemoaning the lack of City support for artists in Savannah. Houston paid a stipend, offered field trips, and provided opportunities for collectors and curators to come see her work.) “That’s when I started doing interactive art. My studio was always open, and I knew visitors were dying to touch things and contribute, so I created this “Creeping Vine Project” where they could add fabric to it. Everyone from third graders to college students to senior citizens contributed and grew that vine!”

That residency led to a teaching-artist position at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and to several group and individual shows, but during the pandemic she returned to Savannah, to open spaces, and to the support of family. “It was the pandemic, and my husband was an essential worker. I had zero outdoor space in an apartment in the middle of the city, and it was just me, doing home schooling.”

Today, a carport outside her Richmond Hill home serves as her studio 90% of the time, and a table in her living room serves as her studio if it’s too hot. During her recent divorce, she says that art, friends, family, and nature became her “life saver.” “I’m just now coming out of that phase of doing art because I needed to, to making art because it’s my fulltime professional practice. I’m trying not to be sales-driven. I need to be in the flow of exploring my work without the pressure of worry about who’s going to buy it.”

Again, we go off on a tangent: “In Savannah, art is often seen as a product and it needs to be cheap. Because of that, I feel this weight on artists that isn’t productive. I can tell they are a little worn down because the City’s not supporting them. In Houston there are individual artist grants of up to $20K. Here there are $5K Weave-A-Dream grants set up for nonprofits, not for artists, so there’s really nothing.”

Braziel recently leased a studio in ARTS Southeast’s Sulfur Studio (the only organization that I feel is truly supporting artists in our community) where she had a month-long residency last year. She is excited to have “my Studio 10 project space.” She does not create art there, instead using it for performances and installations. It’s a space in which “to play, collaborate, and showcase things I’m dying to share. Instead of thinking about nature, motherhood, and the environment in a material way and creating a piece of art, I’ll be doing it in a completely different format. I just hope that it brings a little energy and fun to the art community. It’s not always about selling.”

The artist draws joy and spiritual strength from her time in nature and feels depleted if not around it and in it. A recent four-day trip to Ossabaw Island at the invitation of her mentor Liz Sergeant filled her “with so much gratitude and love for Georgia.” She was motivated, inspired, and honored to be in the company of such established artists as Betsy Cain and Tobia Makover, and collected a plethora of natural objects to include in future art pieces.

 “I’m settling into this confidence that I can work with found natural objects. That they can be taken seriously as material that has value. There is no waste in my practice: I paint, tear, stitch, burn, or introduce whatever process I can think of. That’s very playful to me. For example, my piece “20% Contained,” is about wildfires in California, but it’s also about feeling out of control during my year of personal turmoil. And “The Long Hike” could be looked at as a beautiful sculpture, but it’s also about this long journey I went on with my family as we dealt with issues surrounding my husband and our ultimate divorce.”

As for the future, Braziel says, “My work is always for sale, but it’s expensive for this area so I’d rather sell it in other cities. At Sulfur, I can play and work out my ideas for future proposals in larger markets. I also miss project-based teaching. I like doing family programming and I’m thinking about offering workshops through Sulfur Studios.”

She may even offer outdoor nature hikes…“My art is fulfilling this craving that I have, that everyone has, to be in nature. I think it’s just that simple.”

Find out more at RebeccaBraziel.com, follow her on Instagram @rebeccabraziel, and be sure to visit her on April 7 for First Friday in her Studio 10 Project Space inside ARTS Southeast’s Sulfur Studios, 2301 Bull Street when she’ll collaborate with Telfair Museums’ assistant curator Anne-Solene Bayan on a written word piece.

This article appears in Mar 1-31, 2023.