Meet the Artists: Dorit Schwartz

Reclaimed wood, crystal and light: how a sculptor who began in clay and marble came to build sculptures around a hollow in the wood.

October 26, 2026By Gaia on Main

This story is part of Meet the Artists, a series in which we introduce the people behind the work on our walls in Park City and Sun Valley: how they work, what moves them, and how they got here.

“Art is a bridge to the human spirit.”
Dorit Schwartz

Many of Dorit Schwartz’s sculptures begin with a piece of wood that already has a hollow in it. “I’m looking for woods that have hollow space inside in order to accommodate the crystal,” she explains. Into that space goes crystal, most often quartz; the piece is mounted on steel and lit from within. Her own short description of the work: “reclaimed wood + crystal + light.” Dorit (pronounced doh-REET) calls this body of work The Light Within, and it is the heart of what we show at GAIA. She has been with us since January 2021, when she announced a partnership with “a newly opened gallery in Park City, Utah.” Readers of our guide to the galleries on Main Street have already met her work.

Where it began

“At a very young age, I wanted to be an artist,” Dorit has said. “Loving nature and elements of the outdoors always fascinated me.” She studied fine arts at the Wizo Art School in Tel Aviv, concentrating on art history and ceramics. When she was 17, her family left Israel and settled in Los Angeles. There she met her husband, Ronnie. Asked what she would have done if she weren’t an artist, she didn’t hesitate: “I would be a florist designer due to my passion for nature.”

In the mid-nineties the family moved to Las Vegas. She thanks her family for much of what followed: her kids, she says, “push me to be more creative,” and Ronnie “has been amazing in creating a space for me to display and develop my art.”

From clay to marble to wood and crystal

Her biography sums up the path in one line: she “began her artistic journey with clay, moved onto marble carving, and now works with wood and crystal.” After drawing classes at UNLV she was introduced to alabaster, the start of what she jokingly called her “new love affair.” Then wood came in. “I just walked in nature, and an idea came to me,” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “When an idea comes to you, you should let it manifest through you. And it did; it just took off.”

Her first pieces of that kind paired wood from Indonesia with alabaster carved to mirror it; for later ones she chose wood that was as gnarled as possible (“the more gnarled, the better”). In early 2010 she began The Light Within, placing crystals inside the wood. Crystal, she said at the time, needs one more element to come alive: its own light. “When you see this piece sitting properly, you will see what will happen when the light will hit.”

Alongside The Light Within she developed Light of Kabbalah: selenite hand-carved with symbols from The 72 Names of God and lit with built-in architectural lighting. In a video about the collection she shows a name inlaid in 24-karat gold. She has also made a limited-edition collection of hand-painted lithographs, four of which are at GAIA.

Heart of Light by Dorit Schwartz, monkey pot wood, quartz and lemurian quartz, stainless steel base, led lights — Heart of Light, Dorit Schwartz. Monkey Pot Wood, Quartz and Lemurian Quartz, Stainless Steel Base, LED Lights, 48 x 21 x 11 in.

How she works

Finding the wood. “The woods mostly come from the Far East,” Dorit says, pieces that have been “laying around forever.” In 2017 she travelled into the forests of Thailand to find new pieces. Not all of it comes from Asia: for one sculpture she chose a slice of burl maple from Colorado, cut from what she described as “maybe a 40 feet log,” and dried it in a kiln for weeks before the carving began.

Finding the crystal. Crystals come from trips such as the 2019 gem show in Tucson, Arizona. Her pieces at GAIA use clear and white quartz, Lemurian quartz, apophyllite, malachite, citrine and smoky quartz.

The match. Then comes the part she clearly loves most. “This is my playground,” she says of her workbench. She lays out the wood and the crystal and tries them together “until boom,” when “those two are a perfect match, and then the process starts.”

Following the wood. She doesn’t force a design onto the material. “I follow the natural movement of the wood and allow the sculpture to reveal its form,” she writes. Or, more briefly: “I don’t just work with these elements. I listen to them.” About her recent olive-wood work she says the same: “I work with olive wood by treating the original form of the tree as part of the sculpture.”

Carving, setting, finishing. Opening up the hollow takes “a lot of chiseling.” Then the crystal is set and the wood is mounted on its base. One Instagram before-and-after notes simply that a piece “took 35 hours.” She sands from coarse grits up to 400, because she wants collectors to touch the wood and feel the contrast with the crystal. “All my pieces, touch them,” she once advised. “Hug them.”

Light. Last comes the light. She works on a handful of pieces at once, and a single sculpture can take months.

Divine Creation by Dorit Schwartz, white quartz, tamarind wood, high-polish stainless steel base, lights — Divine Creation, Dorit Schwartz. White Quartz, Tamarind Wood, High-Polish Stainless Steel Base, Lights, 60 x 44 x 13 in.

What inspires her

Nature comes first, and the wish to bring it indoors. Dorit has always thought about “how to bring the outdoors, in to our home bringing harmony to the environment around me.” Travel feeds that: “My inspiration comes from traveling around the world,” she has said, and above all from the jungles of Costa Rica.

Among artists she points to Auguste Rodin and Constantin Brancusi and their “adherence to the truth of materials.” Crystals play a personal role too. In her artist’s statement she writes that each crystal brings its own “energetic signature and power.”

What she hopes people find in her work is something quieter than perfection: “beauty isn’t found in perfection, but in truth, texture, and presence.” Or, in another interview: “Beauty is a presence—it’s how something makes you feel rather than just how it looks.”

Ancient Light by Dorit Schwartz, olive wood, colombia quartz and quartz crystal, steel base, led lights — Ancient Light, Dorit Schwartz. Olive Wood, Colombia Quartz and Quartz Crystal, Steel Base, LED Lights, 28 x 26 x 8 in.

Public work and recognition

Since 2008 Dorit has been Resident Artist for the Las Vegas chapter of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which she helped found. There she created her sculpture Celebration of Life, and versions of it stand around the city, from the Discovery Children’s Museum and the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health to UNLV, City Hall and Symphony Park at The Smith Center. In 2014 she was one of 12 featured artists, chosen from more than 700 applicants, at the 30th Mission Federal ArtWalk in San Diego.

Her first major sale came when she was the featured artist at the Wynn in Las Vegas: a collector bought one of the largest pieces she had ever made and had it shipped to his office in London. “I felt validated, seen, and deeply inspired,” she remembers. Her work is in private collections in London, Zurich, Paris, Los Angeles and New York. In 2024 the City of Las Vegas listed her among its pre-qualified sculptors, and in 2026 Architectural Digest featured The Light Within.

What’s next

Lately Dorit has been taking on more commissions. “Each piece begins with a conversation, an idea, a feeling, or a vision,” she writes, and from there she selects the wood and crystals. She has made a sculpture for an outdoor setting, where “my goal is to create work that feels as though it has always belonged there,” and has started making functional olive-wood pieces with live edges. Her summary of that new work could stand for all of it: “Sometimes the most powerful statement is not what we add, but what we choose to preserve.”

Dorit Schwartz’s work at GAIA

These sculptures by Dorit are available through GAIA. Each one is unique, and the light inside them is something a photograph can’t really show. See them in person, lit, at either gallery.