Nirit Dekel

As long as she can remember, Dekel was into ‘art’ and studying and practicing drawing, painting, and jewelry design.

After graduating from college, she was swept into the high-tech wave, worked for one of the largest high-tech firms in Israel, but realized that her passion was to create art. Seeing a Dale Chihuly exhibition in Jerusalem in 2000 was, she says, “like an alarm clock waking me back to life.”

She immediately fell in love with glass, fascinated by its simultaneous strength, flexibility, and elegance as an artistic medium. “Glass has a sense of vitality. It’s a living material evolving all the time… Glass beads are like people for me… They look awake, moving, bubbling, winking, and restlessly jumping”