Pia Rakel fæddist í Skotlandi árið 1953 af finnsk íslenskum foreldrum. Á yngri árum sínum flutti hún til Íslands og bjó þar til hún fékk stúdentspróf. Til Danmerkur fór Pía til náms og ílentist þar við störf og glerlist sína í um 40 ár.
Pía Rakel lærði arkitektúr á Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts í Kaupmannahöfn, en byrjaði snemma að gera tilraunir med gluggagler sem endurunnið var úr ruslgleri sem einingar eða skraut fyrir byggingar. Ferill hennar, sem glerlistamaður byrjaði í Danska Hönnunarskólanum, þar sem hún var gestanemandi í 2 ár.
Í mörg ár hefur hun tekið þátt í mörgum sýningum hérlendis og erlendis. Hún starfaði við hönnun og Unika í 4 ár hjá Holmegårds Glassworks og sinnti gestaskólastörfum í Kaupmannahöfn og Kolding Hönnunarskólum, auk fleirri lýðháskóla í Danmörku, auk skreytingarverkefna i byggingum, stundum í samvinnu við arkitekta bæði fyrir einkaaðila og opinberar byggingar.
Pia var með verkstæði í um 25 ár vid ströndina á Amager í gamalli verksmiðjubyggingu. Síðustu ár hefur hún einnig verið med vinnustofu og heimili vid Meðalfellsvatn.
Eins og farfuglinn , fer hún á milli staða, en til Íslands verður hún að fara og hlaða batteríin í nærveru við nátturuna. Nálægðin við nátturuna á Íslandi, skriðjöklar, vatn , is og hraun hafa oftast verið í verkum hennar ásamt geometriskum formum.
If anyone of the glass artists present deserves to be called ”a jack-of-all-trades” it is surely Finnish-Icelandic artist Pia Rakel Sverrisdottir. During a career of some twenty years she has produced functional glass objects such as bowls and vases, panels and partitions made out of sandblasted windowglass, mosaics out of recycled glass, free standing panels out of metal and glass and tiles of recycled glass for bathrooms and kitchens. On top of that it is often sometimes forgotten that Pia Rakel Sverrisdottir started her career as an architect and graphic designer. Thus she is an eminently capable individual, not least when it comes to tackling glass commissions for architectural settings, supposedly her favourite assignments. Pia Rakel Sverrisdottir´s glass art has two main characteristics. On the one hand is her ecolocigal attitude to her medium, unusual for an modern glass artist. She uses industrial windowglass- not only out of aesthetic choice, but conciders it her civic duty to recycle as much as possible of the discarded industrial glass littering our modern urban landscape today, as such glass cannot be disposed of through burning like most other refuse. On the other hand it takes less heat, and thus less energy, to recycle such glass than to use new glass, wich is also important to her.
Another characteristic of Pia Rakel Sverrisdóttir`s art is its pronounced graphic look and naturebased imergy. Instead of using the colour spectrum, she employs mostly black and white contrasts or a selection of tones on the gray scale, which transmit a diffuse soft light while providing the user of her glass panels or enclosures with a measure of privacy. This is where her sandblasting is at its most effective, allowing her to create a series of intertwining abstract imagenery which refers back to her beloved Icelandic landscape. This landscape , she says- the light, sea , lava and glaciers- is ever precent, yet ever transformet, in her work. The artist has also executed a number of glass pieces based on Nordic mythology, applying similar methods as in her other works. Her chosen imagery is deconstructed and then imaginatively reconstructed, forming layers of interconnected meanings. Six glass windows of this kind are to be found in a apartment block in Frederiksberg, Denmark.
