About Me

Hi and welcome. My name is Rachel and I am the owner and artist here at Akers of Art.

I specialise in wire sculptures either in a frame to hang on your wall or free form but I also love to paint murals and make bespoke wire wrapped jewellery. I also run workshops for both children and adults both face to face and online. 

I draw my inspiration from my home town of Birmingham but also my travels all over the world. Having lived in New Zealand for 8 years, spending 6 months of my university time on an exchange in Connecticut USA and many travels in Europe and worldwide.

I find, in cities, the juxtaposition of architecture to green spaces quite beautiful, it is surprising how much woodland is still left untouched in big cities. 

In Birmingham there are some incredible new and unique buildings going up all around the city but also some stunning old buildings. Dotted between these buildings you will always find trees and plants to keep us all in touch with nature. This is true in many big cities around the world, like Auckland in New Zealand, Sydney in Australia and Barcelona in Spain. To name a few that I have been lucky enough to explore. 

There are so many stunning unique architectural and natural combinations in these places. It is easy to create wonderful artwork with all of this inspiration, much of it on my doorstep.

Early Years

From a very young age, I fully enjoyed art and artistic expression. My first explorations into art were copying things I saw in books and in the natural environment and I enjoyed this so much that I chose Art as part of my education as a GCSE and an A’Level.  

I then went on to study Visual Arts at university where I explored many different artistic techniques. My favourite forms of expression back then were large paintings on canvas and 3D creations in clay.

University

I studied at Central Connecticut State University for the last 6 months of my degree where I found my love of wire sculpting and held my first exhibition with a set of wire jazz musicians. I love jazz and the instruments that are played and wanted to create a stage setting with three musicians playing their instruments.  

You can definitely see the way that my skills have developed from this point of my life from my first metal sculptures to what I now create.  

It was in America that I also tried my hand at jewellery design and started making pieces using gemstones and setting them into a base, I found this work fascinating but it wasn’t something I pursued for quite a number of years.

At Central Connecticut State University, I worked behind the scenes on theatre productions, creating large murals for parts of the set design and found a real passion for large scale painting.  

This kind of artistic interpretation made me really happy and I found painting murals and creating jewellery and wire sculptures to be very therapeutic and great way to express myself and my feelings.

Travel and Inspiration 

I have travelled a lot over the years and gained life experience from visiting different countries and learning about their cultures. I have a great passion for architecture and would spend time exploring cities and countryside in search of unique historic buildings or new innovative constructions. I am an avid photographer and I would build collections of buildings where I like the curve of the roof or an intriguing intricate door carving or twisted metal gate.  

I was lucky enough to live in New Zealand for 8 years and it was there that I began painting murals professionally, mainly for children’s bedrooms or play areas. Using the landscape for inspiration. I also, as a hobby, started creating beaded jewellery.

On my return to the UK in 2013, I moved back to my home town of Birmingham. I find the juxtaposition of architecture to green spaces in Birmingham quite beautiful, it is surprising how much woodland and “green space” is still left untouched in a big city like Birmingham. There are some incredible new and unique buildings going up all around the city but also some stunning old buildings that could be mistaken for a historic building in other European cities, for example our beautiful art gallery and council houses. In between these beautiful buildings you will always find trees and plants to keep us all in touch with nature.  

Present Day

Which brings me to the present day where I now use these inspirations from my home town and travels in my work, especially in my framed sculptures where you have the harsh solid lines of the frame intertwined with the metal trees cascading from the frame. I use metal and gemstones to create bespoke and unusual sculptures that are fluid and winding but also have the rigidity of the metal. Manipulating the metal into the curves of a natural form.

I liked the idea of combining my metal sculptural wire work with my jewellery and started to wrap gemstones with intricate pieces of woven and twisted wire.  This in turn then went back into the sculptures where I used these wire wrapped gemstones to create large sculpture installations.

I paint murals of trees and flowers and have also created fun murals for children’s bedrooms and schools.

I also like to create pieces of jewellery that are the true definition of “wearable art”. I construct pieces of jewellery that when not being worn can be placed into a frame to create a unique sculptural piece to be admired.