Nirit Levav Packer - Contemporary artist and creator, was born on 1963, married and a mother of 4 boys. In 1987 she graduated her fashion studies at the Parsons School of Design in New-York, which after she developed a fashion design career, focused on wedding gowns. In the year 2000 she began to create art in parallel to her other occupation and extended her knowledge in goldsmith art, ceramics, and iron sculpture.
Nirit acquired most of her training as a contemporary artist at a workshop that belonged to her Father's, Tzvi Levav of blessed memory - that was considered a leader in his field. Nirit used to help her father on the holidays, when she learned from him how to weld and work with varied materials and, most of all, not to hesitate to try, experiment and learn. The rest of her knowledge was brought by her mother - an arts and crafts teacher, and a sewer.
The diverse materials and arts Nirit was exposed to since her early childhood until her young adult life made a great impact on her today as an artist and on her love for recycling. She calls herself a compulsive collector of "junk", a variety of materials that she collects out of curiosity and interest, and once there is enough of it she begins to create with it.
The early series bring out Nirit's ability to create art from a variety of recycled raw materials, mostly metal- such as gears and bearings, railroad ties, keys, and old nails; waste - such as bulbs, mattresses, dolls, clothes peg, and glass shards; and materials from nature - such as acorns, sunflower seeds, rice, sea sand, gravel, sea shells and more.
In 2010 Levav-Packer made a choice to focus on one material - bicycle chains, and one subject - dogs. The material was discovered "by coincidence" during one of her visits at a bicycle repair shop. She asked the owner to save his "garbage" for her. The chains were appeared to be a wonderful material that contained both her love to iron and her excitement to get to know and investigate it's delicateness and flexibility of this material, and its' versatile movement. The result was the first dog series of UNCHAINED.
Later on, Nirit began to create the dresses series that is made of different materials - such as tree branches, watches and bands, bicycle parts, bulbs, keys, gravel and construction iron, and added in humor matching dogs. In 2015 she began working on another series of pregnant women (FROM WITHIN), all made of different part of cars, motorbikes and bicycles, clothes hangers, springs and more.
Levav-Packer believes that all the people in the world have a talent that is unique to them, and if we focus on our inner selves and bring out the best we can, we will live in peace with ourselves and influence our near and far environment. To her, art is a cross-borders language that is not based on academic studies, rather, to her, when you look at an art piece or design, it makes no difference what is the nationality of its'creator, his sex or skin color, where did he study or showcased his works before - it only matters if the piece "touched" the observers, if it moved them and if it speaks a universal language that unites hearts.
Watch the video about Nirit Levav-Packer:
