Pia Maria Raeder likens the feeling of an artwork coalescing to hearing the best part of a song. “You work on a figure—you shape something, carve something—then it clicks, and you just know.” This intuition guides the sculptor’s practice, which has in recent years found a global audience.
Her “Sea Anemone” series glosses everyday objects with an animated vitality, her lamps and tables—made of countless beechwood rods— evoking the undulating aquatic creatures. Nature has long been the source of the Munich-based artist’s creativity. “I had a really close friendship with a tree when I was a kid,” she says. Spending time both in Munich and at Lake Starnberg just outside the city, the artist continues to turn to the landscape as inspiration for her creations.
Yet through Raeder’s lens, nature transforms: Despite being made of wood, her “Sea Anemones” appear soft, the many hand-crafted filaments that make up the structure playing with light as the day wanes. Her 2022 “Stardust” fixtures—inspired by the night sky at Lake Starnberg—are benches and barstools fastened in bronze, the metal’s hue deepening in the dark.
This shifting, living quality is the artist’s intention: Raeder’s creations are never static, but meant to mutate. “When you look at one side, the sculptures have one face—I call them faces. [On the other,] a very different face again.”
The artist’s work recently garnered the attention of veteran gallerist Todd Merrill. “Pia’s ability to marry pure aesthetic sculpture with functional objects, all while exploring a diverse range of material applications, showcases an independent artistic vision that resonates deeply with our ethos,” observes Merrill.
Raeder joins the gallery’s roster at an exciting time: Todd Merrill will be one of a handful of contemporary design studios to show at next week's Intersect Aspen Art and Design Fair, making this the first year that design is formally included in the fair’s program. Raeder, for one, appreciates the inclusion: “Intersect is much more welcoming, embracing art and design without putting them into categories,” she observes.
While she has never exhibited work in Aspen before, Raeder recalls a wintertime trip to the mountain town fondly and looks forward to returning. In the meantime, the artist has already begun work on a few new projects with Todd Merrill, including a series of large outdoor sculptures of coral reefs inspired by their beauty and human-imposed decay.
As always, Raeder is creating with intention. “I hope that at one point people will say, ‘Her work made me think a little bit about nature, and it’s worth treating it more nicely than we do.’”
