Founder

LIA CHAVEZ
ARTIST

Lia Chavez, the founder of Hildegaard, had her first visions of light as a young child. While other kids played outside, Lia blacked out the windows in her attic to conduct endless hours of experimentation and exploration of luminous phenomena. Even from a young age, Lia sensed a direct cosmic connection between light, creativity of both mind and heart, and the natural world. Today, she is an internationally renowned artist who crafts unforgettable encounters with light.

After studying feminist aesthetics at Oxford University and art at Goldsmiths College, she has gone on to create a body of work that provokes her audiences to contemplate the deeper role that light plays within nature, our lives, and our minds. Lia’s work is featured around the globe in premier venues such as the Venice Biennale and the Tate and in the pages of publications like Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

Her spirited pursuit of light and luminosity, deepened by her continuous mystical encounters, led her inevitably to plants, the great professors of light. Through plants, Lia has come to understand the power of light for luminous living. Hildegaard’s botanical creations are guided by Lia’s studies in plant science under biochemist T. Colin Campbell of Cornell University and her work in herbalism under legendary herbalist Rosemary Gladstar — and by a lifetime of active practice in cultivation, artisanal formulation, and daily contemplation in her own garden.