Vicki Love

My earliest and best memories revolve around my love for nature and it’s beauty. During childhood most of my free time was spent in the woods playing, fantasizing and meditating. These lasting impressions are reflected in my work today. For the past thirty-three years, I have exhibited in fine arts festivals. I spent the first eleven of those years pioneering my technique, of sculpting leather to create form and texture. This is an extensive technique in which the leather is put through a process of wetting and heating to mold and finished by gluing and sewing. This technique is used in my sculptural designs allowing me to create three-dimensional pieces with the leather and texture to my one-of-a-kind handbags. The final process, my handbags and garments are adorned with antler, horn, glass beads, vintage pieces, and semi-precious stones. In my pieces, I work exclusively with deerskin, because in my experience, it is truly the best leather. This leather is soft to the touch, but one of the most durable that one will come across. It is also fabulous for my garments for many reasons; it is open grain leather, which allows the skin to breathe like cotton, it is washable leather, the hides have minimal stretch to them, and the strength of cowhide.

My desire is that my work makes people happy. It is pure joy to me when something I have made is cherished as someone’s favorite thing. I believe that in using it, the owner will have more joy and radiate this to those they come in contact with, and that the magic of the deep woods will continue.