Lily Reeves

I believe that light and energy are magical tools, and that the desert, where the sky touches the earth, is a place of great spiritual power and awakening. In my work, I channel the sacred energy of the natural world and celebrate the mythic landscapes of the American Southwest. My visual language moves across disciplines, drawing from Ecofeminism, Light Art, Land Art, Architecture, Sustainability, Spirituality, Craft, Magic, and Design to form a singular language grounded in the phenomenal nature of light and time.        
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 My practice is an act of redefinition and reclamation: elevating traditional glass neon, a classified endangered craft, beyond its commercial past and recasting it as a vessel for myth-making, place-making, and collective transformation. Saturated light, elemental forces, optical materials, and energetic bodies form the architecture of my work, resulting in sculptures and installations where time slows, perception shifts, and the natural and the otherworldly collide. Light art, for me, is not simply illumination, but invocation; a medium capable of crafting new worlds and deeper connections between people and place.          

Originally from Alabama, Lily Reeves’ early practice was contoured by the uncanny and supernatural qualities of growing up in the Appalachian region of the American South. She began working at Sloss Metal Arts Foundry at the age of 15, and went on to obtain her BFA from Alfred University in New York, and an MFA from Arizona State University, in Phoenix, two of the five schools in the country with neon programs at the university level. She founded Reeves Studios, a UL-listed, full-service art and design studio, in 2019, where she executes large-scale commissions that push the boundaries of neon and light-based sculpture. Simultaneously, she is shaping the next generation of artists through her professorship at ASU, teaching the craft of neon to emerging artists.