Artist Bio

Libby Raab is a paper weaver and licensed architect based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Holding a BA in Psychology from DePauw University and a BArch from Boston Architectural College, she has practiced architecture for over 30 years and founded Libby Raab Architecture in 2015.

Raab began her art practice in 2021, working with photo and paper weaving as an exploration of structure, pattern, and color. She views weaving as an inherently architectural act, a form of spatial expression and material experimentation. Just as her residential architecture prioritizes connection and intimacy, her artwork seeks the same personal resonance, inviting viewers into layered, tactile encounters with familiar imagery.

Her work has been commissioned for private residences and public spaces, and has been featured in galleries, publications, and a museum exhibition.

Artist Statement

Weaving is an act of integration. My paper weaves explore both the generation and the degeneration of this act: the simultaneous building up and the breaking down, the integration of structure and the disintegration of organic material into impermanence and decay.

The building blocks of my weaves are original photographs of patterns found in nature. Some images are intentionally degraded, others exaggerated, creating digital textures that evoke the impression of previously woven fabric. Working with pre-printed paper and paper raffia, I am drawn to how paper inhabits a space between the mundane (receipts, documents, packaging) and the transcendent. It is capable of evoking emotion and narrating stories far beyond its utilitarian origins.

My weaves are meditations on the balance between presence and absence. I have discovered that removing material, or "unweaving," can unveil unexpected beauty. I find the same quiet dignity in ancient textile fragments: remnants where time has etched its story through worn threads, missing sections, and faded patterns. Each tear and repair speaks of lives lived, of countless hands and moments woven into fabric.

By pairing a humble, everyday material with one of humanity's oldest crafts, I have found a lens through which to examine both. These are not functional objects as in traditional woven fiber, but pure artistic explorations of color, texture, and pattern, works that sit at the intersection of architecture and textile, structure and decay, the familiar and the transformed.