Rebecca Cileo resides in Happy Valley, outside of Redding. She and her husband, Bill, live on a place they call Harmony Hill Farm. Rebecca was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and says that her parents “took every opportunity to teach their four children to observe and appreciate nature, wherever we could find it.” This love of nature has dominated Rebecca’s life ever since.
Family vacations were unplanned adventures. They packed clothes for all kinds of weather, picked a direction, and just took off. What Rebecca found fascinating were fish hatcheries and different fish species. The family began touring every fish hatchery they came across. Rebecca says, “Hatcheries will help ensure we have fish populating our waters for generations to come.”
Her early adult years were spent in management positions in banking. Most of this time was in Pleasant Hill, where she met her husband. But Rebecca yearned for a more rural lifestyle. So when her husband retired in 1991, and now with a 14-year-old son, Justin, they found what they were looking for on a 20-acre plot in Happy Valley. Before long, they had 6 horses, 6 cows, 11 pigs, 200 chickens, and a substantial vegetable garden. These provided most of their food.
Rebecca came across seeds for gourds and harvested them. But what to do with the gourds? Answering this question led to her long-standing avocation as a gourd artist. Gourds brought her to the California Gourd Society, serving on its board for several years. She met other gourd artists from around the world.
Primarily self-taught, Rebecca created gourd art pieces inspired by her love for all things Western, including Southwestern designs, augmented with Asian themes, and flora and fauna subjects. The gourds can be functional vessels or mainly works of art.
With the Sacramento River and the Coleman Fish Hatchery close by, fish remained important to Rebecca, eventually leading to her unique fish gourds. In her words: “I had a dream one night about a salmon gourd. I could actually see the movement of the fish, and when I woke, I went to work trying to capture what I had dreamt. After several attempts, and many smashed gourds, I finally came up with a design that would actually work. Gourds are fragile, and cuts have to be planned to retain as much strength as possible. Each of the diving salmon gourds has a bowl stand that is weighted down with river rocks, which to me, represents the spawning grounds, the future. I also toss in a marble, because when I was a child, my parents had an aquarium, and one fish with whiskers had a rubber band and a marble that it actually played with. Therefore, I believe all my fish need to be sent out with a toy.”
For many years, Rebecca’s life was consumed by her gourd art. She traveled to art shows and festivals, bringing focus to her life, as well as financial returns. Over the years, Rebecca and Bill kept cutting back on the arduous life of farming. She no longer travels to art shows, now selling her gourd art strictly on consignment. Her devotion to conservation is shown in her work with local organizations, such as the Shasta Group of the Sierra Club and the Shasta Land Trust. She continues to be an avid hiker and backpacker.
