Your Cart is Empty
A surfer, designer, artist, and explorer, Lake Buckley likes to experiment with different mediums—in life and in art. She thinks of her creative process as a kind of “rotational farming—you can’t grow the same things in the soil year after year or it will get robbed of all its nutrients…It’s the same for me.” So, instead, she does everything, from sketches to film to animation. She explains that, “I change the type of work I’m doing so I can stay invigorated and find the medium that best suits the idea rather than trying to force the medium to fit the concept.”
Photo: Daniella Dawson
Becoming an artist hasn’t always been a conscious choice for Lake; she explains that “since day one, I’ve been making things and building…it’s never been a choice, it’s been my life since I can remember and as I grew up I realized it was an important part of my identity I wanted to hold on to.” In fact, she “had a different weird homegrown company every year—hand-knitting shoes, a cake company, miniature sweaters—I just loved making things. My ultimate fantasy was to be stranded on a desert island where I had to build everything from scratch…still kind of is!” After majoring in Environmental Science and Studio Art at Oberlin College, Lake went on to complete a masters program at RISD specializing in graphic design. She began collaborating with Bureo in January, creating an awesome “Nets to Decks” design featured on Bureo’s recycled fishnet frisbees.
Photo: Daniella Dawson
Like the Bureo team, Lake is passionate about the ocean and the search for creative solutions to environmental problems. Originally from Marin County, California, she spent a lot of time in the water growing up: “Our family motto is ‘just add water,’” she says. The sense of wonder and engagement with the present that characterizes her artistic process is also connected to her relationship with the ocean. Lake enjoys “long swims in big surf because it forces me to be in a state of alertness—it’s not stressful, it’s just that I am fully in the present moment—the same is true for why I’m attracted to art and design. It’s that moment of getting into the flow and drifting away from a symphony of thoughts into the present.”
Photo: Daniella Dawson
Like the ocean, the flow of Lake’s artwork is somewhat unpredictable and mysterious. She explains that “the ocean is humbling. It’s so much greater and more powerful than me. I feel the same way about creativity, it’s something that I get to play with, but it’s never something I can control.” The ocean is also a place of joy, a second home that brings her family together.
Photo: Daniella Dawson
A lifelong student, Lake says she likes “having versatility and learning how to communicate through visual metaphor…it keeps me excited!” She usually begins a project by writing down ideas. She believes in thorough research but also in a “philosophy of learning through making. Sometimes my hands are smarter than my thoughts. They can lead me to surprising end results that linear thinking wouldn’t have revealed.”
Photo: Daniella Dawson
But the ocean isn’t Lake’s sole inspiration or source of adventure. After driving cross-country, Lake realized she was missing a lot by moving at the pace of a car. Around the same time, she learned that the largest class action lawsuit against the USDA was due to discrimination against women and people of color and that there was significant growth in the number of female farmers in the U.S. So, she and a friend decided to investigate, securing a grant from Patagonia to cycle 4500 miles across the U.S. and interview 50 female farmers along the way.
Lake learned a lot from that trip—on multiple levels. She realized “quickly, really quickly, that it was way more of an exercise in realizing interdependence than individuality or self-reliance. On a bike you are visibly vulnerable, so people end up offering you help or a place to stay…it was amazing to realize how consistently good people are even if we have totally opposing views. It was also important for me as a young woman to meet these beacons of fierce female leadership working so hard to champion alternative agricultural methods in direct opposition to cultural expectations.” As with swimming, surfing, and art, traveling by bike allowed her to engage with the present in a meaningful way.
Photo: Daniella Dawson
When asked what she’d like people to take away from her artwork, Lake says that she “would love for people to understand everything in their world as something that is malleable to be changed or re-imagined. So much of culture is built on these stories that we create and then take for granted…I’m interested in having people question all the things they take for granted in order to live more expansively, where they’re using their imagination all the time…and then acting on it.”
Written by Brooke Ortel
