Brianna Cappelli Solace, 2022

Solace, 2022

Ash, Brass Hardware

Solace echoes the warm glow of the sun on one’s skin. It embodies the meditative qualities of viewing and feeling vibrations of waveforms. Solace invites interaction with the viewer. As the fixtures twist and turn, each perspective exposes a different form created by the negative space and curvilinear lines. This piece works to captivate a sense of calm and introspection for the viewer, offering a space to feel the warmth and nourishment of nature. 

Solace was my first investigation of bending on a luthier’s pipe. I handmade strips of veneer and bent them over the hot pipe. Working intuitively, each curve built off of one another. This approach strengthened my understanding of three dimensional forms and my connection to bending intuitively. As my body sways back and forth in the process, I create my own waveforms. To insert the lights, I re-wired each chord.  

Brianna Cappelli is a wood artist and sculptor from Richmond, Virginia. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Craft & Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2023. Cappelli creates expressive sculpture, furniture, and installations that challenge boundaries between materiality, form, and function. Her practice explores the visual and structural parallels between the human body and the natural world, revealing their shared rhythms and interconnectedness.

Following an internship with furniture maker and artist Marc Fish, in England, Cappelli is now based in Virginia to pursue a professional career in fine art. In 2022, her work was awarded as ‘Best in Lighting’ at the Innovation & Design Competition held by the International Society of Furniture Designers in High Point, NC. She has also exhibited work at the Anderson Gallery in Richmond, VA for the Juried Exhibition 2021-2023, Craft Consciousness, […], Ethical Metalsmith’s So Fresh and So Clean 2023, as well as Windows to the Inside: Expression of Mental Health for Woman Made Gallery. Cappelli has been featured by the Furniture Society, Women of Woodworking, and in Inc Magazine’s “Metamorphosis” (2022). Her recent sculpture Abloom appears in Peters Valley School of Craft’s Exhibition in Print: Wicked Wood (2025).

54” x 36” x 24” (Installed)