Billie Shane, Designer

Sculptor and furniture designer Billie Shane has been thrilled by the idea of discovering beauty in unlikely places since she was young. While growing up in Los Angeles, she could be found plowing through flea markets, antique shops, and even trashcans for hidden treasures. These days, she discovers beautiful shapes hidden inside solid materials such as metal, resin, glass and concrete by freeing them from their industrial bounds to create striking, original jewelry and decorative objects. 
A designer for more than 20 years (since the age of 17), Billie has worked as an interior designer, a furniture designer, a graphic artist, and set decorator. The inspirations for her eclectic design work span from the Japanese modernist sculpture of Noguchi to French Deco ironwork, the Spanish architecture of Gaudi and Jujol and the battles of World War II. But her fascination with metal emanates from an influence closer to home: her Dad. 
A comedy writer and kinetic sculptor, Billie’s father, Everett Greenbaum, began schooling her at a young age in everything from glass blowing to welding in his studio.  That tutelage continued through her art school years: “We would work on all kinds of projects together,” Billie recalls, “like suspending mercury between sheets of glass and pouring melted lead into buckets of water and old zinc molds.” 
After earning her Bachelor of Arts’ degree in Design from UCLA, Billie’s desire to design both decorative and useful objects grew when she worked as a set decorator for film and TV for seven years. “I learned how to realize something out of nothing,” Billie said, “because the art department often needed items to be fabricated or ‘faked out’ when an elusive object could not be found.” 
Those skills allowed her to fulfill needs in the interior design market, and she began designing tactile furniture and accessories, some of which are manufactured in limited editions. Many clients also commission her to create custom pieces.
In 2001, she founded her own company, Billie Shane Design, and is now focusing on her new 2006 Sculptured Object & Furniture Collection featuring her carved resin Prisma Pendants and multi-use Prisma Pedestals (used as stools, benches, side tables or coffee tables); cast-aluminum Fondling Devices and other decorative objects. “I love the permanency of metal and concrete, and the tactile feel and visual depth of carved resin.  For me, it’s all about form, light, and striking a synergistic combination of the two.”