If you see someone in La Jolla wandering the beach with a crinkled brown paper bag and laser focus on fallen seedpods, don’t be alarmed—it’s probably Erika Givens, and she’s not lost; she’s collecting. Moss, driftwood, mysterious pods that look like they belong in a sci-fi movie… nothing is off-limits. By the time she gets home, her bag is a messy catalog of the neighborhood’s hidden beauty.
For Givens, nature isn’t just pretty, it’s her palette. She proudly works in what she calls the unofficial “wall sculpture world,” where sticks become statements and beachcombing counts as studio time. “It’s that whole idea of just opening yourself up to what’s out there and seeing things that you wouldn’t be programmed to see in your everyday, fast-paced life,” Givens says.
Givens’ work is like an Impressionist painting: Up close, it might look like a lone shard of rock or a single brushstroke, but step back, and the full piece comes to life—a sweeping, abstract mural that brings the outdoors in and pulses with Givens’ love for the natural world.
Givens at La Jolla’s Windansea Beach.
Before turning to large-scale, 3D wall art, Givens was a graphic designer in San Francisco, running her own invitation company. When she relocated to San Diego in 2012 and began designing parts of her new home in Del Sur, she became obsessed by the possibilities of space and dimension.
“Being able to do something like pick a backsplash … or a carpet or any of those little design details, it really did something to me,” she says. “It’s turned my world from being two-dimensional and being on paper or on the computer to being three-dimensional.”
These animal skull–like structures are actually plant pods dipped in acrylic and wrapped in colorful string.
Givens realized she craved a more tactile, physical connection to her work—the hand-to-mind rhythm of creating something you can touch, feel, and hold. That urge to explore texture in a tangible way became her guiding light, transforming her style from pixels to plaster and giving her art its signature dimensionality.
“It’s an old art form to shape things with your hands,” Givens adds. “I’m trying to trust that my imagination and my hands can stay in sync.”
After settling in La Jolla, where she now lives and works out of her home studio, she’s found no shortage of inspiration in the natural world.
“I loved the idea of making things pop off the wall—playing with shadow, light, and texture on a larger scale,” she says.
This ocean-inspired piece hangs in a villa on Jumeirah Bay Island in Dubai.
Her work also reflects a long-standing fascination with cities and the way civilizations are mapped and built. “I wanted to be an urban planner and figure out how cities were designed,” Givens recalls. That interest in grids and aerial perspectives, taking the micro and making it macro, now runs through her art.
“Looking at something from the air that reflects human civilization, and then crossing it over to nature, has been what I’ve done without even realizing it,” she says. “I love studying the fractals of a fern, the way spores grow from a mushroom, root systems under a tree, a spider web, or the veins in a leaf.”
Her creativity starts with hours spent wandering the beach or walking in Los Peñasquitos, slowing down to notice the small details—a shift in a bud’s shape, the pattern of spores, the texture of driftwood. She believes the kind of ideas she’s after can only come from this sort of unhurried observation, the kind that happens far from Instagram’s scroll.
That’s how she first became captivated by the prehistoric Southern magnolia tree. “As I was watching this tree over the years on my walks, I kept thinking, There are so many different forms this bud takes before it blooms,” Givens says. So, she grabbed a bag and started collecting those little botanical wonders whenever they changed on her strolls.
For this piece, Givens collected about 100 dried “hearts” from the coastal globe artichoke shrub.
Then came the magic: Givens dropped each bud into silicone, waited for it to harden, and carefully pulled it out. Voilà—a mold ready to be turned into art. She replicated these molds hundreds of times, building up layer after layer into a massive 44-by-44-inch wall sculpture.
But the process didn’t stop there. To give her plaster buds life and texture, she dipped them in coffee. “Coffee can colorize plaster in this beautiful way,” she says. “The plaster soaks up the coffee in different intensities. It feels like dirt, but it’s not. It’s just beautiful.”
Finally, Givens sprinkled in shards of gold metal flakes, and boom: a tactile masterpiece that captures both the delicate beauty and gritty textures of nature.
San Diego’s versatility continuously fuels her work. Moving from East County’s meticulously planned communities to La Jolla’s more organically laid-out coast proved a culture shift and a creative boost. “I love the juxtaposition,” she says.
Collected in Sayulita, Mexico, these white-painted mimosa tree bean pods reach up 15 inches in length.
The variety extends beyond neighborhoods to the natural world. “Areas like Joshua Tree, super arid, blanched, dry— the colors and the heat and the way the light hits out there is so different and juicy compared to the coast,” Givens muses. “Obviously, there’s coastal light, and there’s light coming through the moisture in the air that is completely different, and the types of smells and things growing along the coast.”
She’s equally inspired by the city’s cultural blend—murals in Barrio Logan and Oceanside, the influence of Latino heritage, the energy of military communities. “Every which way you turn in San Diego, you’re bound to find a juxtaposition—a mix of desert and coast and city and cultural neighborhoods that pop up,” she says. “There are all these pockets.”
That openness to diverse influences has carried Givens far beyond her studio—literally. Her work graces prestigious spaces like Montage Laguna Beach; Four Seasons hotels in Minneapolis and Las Vegas; The Ritz-Carlton, Fort Lauderdale; The St. Regis Longboat Key Resort in Florida; and the newly renovated Boston Children’s Hospital. Closer to home, art lovers can experience her creations at the iconic Hotel del Coronado, where her pieces add a touch of local artistry to the newly renovated historic charm.
One of her most recent projects took her to Saudi Arabia, where she installed a 33-foot-wide wall sculpture in the pool room of a private villa. Grand in scale yet intimate in detail, the sculpture commands the space while still inviting a quiet, personal connection.
“My work is about sparking an emotional response through curiosity—how the piece was made and what it makes you feel,” she says. She’s eager to return to the Middle East, where the intricacy of Islamic art offers a creative spark she’s excited to blend with her San Diego style. Lately, she’s also been thinking about how to create beautiful light fixtures that double as sculptural art, adding a whole new (and practical) dimension to her work.
“Everything I see coming off that ocean and bouncing around in town, in my studio, and off people’s faces and cars, through the eucalyptus trees—that’s what I bring into my work,” Givens says. “There’s a coastal aesthetic that I have, and what’s beautiful about traveling is seeing it through someone else’s eyes, from a completely different perspective.”
