As a painter, Kevin’s goals are to add beauty to the world and meaning to his own life. Kevin believes that “with beauty and meaning, inspiration comes naturally, often, and from everywhere,” so it was a natural transition when he made the switch from traditional painting to textiles.
Getting his start in the luxury fashion world selling hand-painted scarves 20 years ago, Kevin’s line today includes handmade decorative pillows, bedding, curtains, scarves, throws, and more. He employs a studio of artists who help create some of the most elegantly unique, plush, and beautiful textiles in the industry, most recently designing mosaics for New Ravenna. Everyone from New York City art lovers to interior designers are gaga over his beautiful artistry, and his following continues to grow among those that appreciate the finest fibers, handmade craftsmanship, and dynamic design sense.
New Ravenna’s history with Kevin dates back to our origins! Kevin was a schoolmate of our company’s founder Sara Baldwin, and, when asked about ideas for what to call her new mosaic studio, Kevin offered “New Ravenna,” an homage to the American way of honoring the old world by adding “new” to the name. His idea was the perfect way to connect our American born and made mosaics to the the ancient craft from the “City of Mosaics,” Ravenna, Italy.
A trained artist, O’Brien feels, “glass allows me to think like a painter, and shade my image more freely because of the limitless array of colors available at New Ravenna.” In working with the opposing characteristics of mosaics and textiles, O’Brien found beneficial and timely similarities. “Even though textiles and mosaics are obviously opposite in their physical manifestation, hard and timeless versus soft and ephemeral, they both exist to do the same thing. They endure to create beautiful environments that help people moderate their reactions to the uncertainty and disorder of the world around them. Order, cohesion, and a sense of completeness calms the mind and helps to decompress after all the other inputs that we need to process each day.”