ABOUT ALYSSA
I’ve taken a long way around to becoming who I am.
I’m Alyssa Rickards, and I make art as Alyssa Delight. Delight is my middle name, a family name that has been passed down through the women in my family for several generations.
I’m an artist, creative professional, community-minded person, collector, lifelong learner, and someone who has never followed a particularly straight path.
Much of who I am has been shaped by curiosity, necessity, the people who taught me, and a willingness to figure things out as I went.
ALYSSA RICKARDS · ARTIST NAME: ALYSSA DELIGHT
WHERE I COME FROM
Home has meant a lot of different things.
I was born in New Jersey and spent my early childhood near the southern tip of the state before moving with my mother to a town outside Philadelphia when I was nine. At thirteen, I moved to Mayfield, Kentucky, to live with my maternal grandmother. I stayed in that area until 2011, when I moved to Metropolis, Illinois, and in December 2024 I made Paducah, Kentucky, my home.
The places changed, but instability was a constant part of my childhood. We were poor, transportation was unreliable or nonexistent, and home was not always safe. I grew up quickly and learned to pay close attention to the people and circumstances around me.
When I was little, my grandmother’s home in New Jersey was often full of people. By the time I moved in with her in Kentucky, she was living alone, and it became just the two of us. That quieter home gave me something I had not really known before: stability, room to think, and the chance to feel safe enough to become more fully myself.
NEW JERSEY → MAYFIELD → METROPOLIS → PADUCAH
ME AND MY GRANDMOTHER
Curiosity has probably taught me as much as anything else.
INFLUENCE
Creativity was part of my life long before I knew what to call it.
My grandmother has been one of the strongest influences in my life. She has knitted for as long as I can remember, and she also spins wool, weaves, and understands the value of making something slowly and by hand.
When I was young, I helped her prepare wool, went with her to craft fairs, and spent a lot of time around books, art, and people who made things. Her home in New Jersey was often filled with artists, outsiders, and people who had found a place with her when they did not seem to fit anywhere else.
She also gave me a love of reading and a deep respect for curiosity. In her world, learning something new was never strange or impractical. You found out how to do it, tried it, and kept going.
That stayed with me.
I still approach creativity the same way: follow the question, learn the process, and try the thing even if I do not know how to do it yet.
BECOMING AN ARTIST
I did not grow up thinking I would become an artist.
For most of my life, I thought of myself as someone who liked making things. It took me much longer to understand that the things I was making were connected by ideas, not materials.
Once I began recognizing the same questions returning through different projects, I became more comfortable calling myself an artist. The work had already been there. I was the one who needed time to recognize it.
REBUILDING
A life can change more than once.
I became a mother at sixteen, long before I had any idea what adulthood was supposed to look like. I earned my GED, tried college before I was ready for it, worked, raised my daughter, and spent years building a life while learning most things as I went.
My path has included divorce, abuse, caregiving, financial uncertainty, interrupted education, and periods when starting over felt less like a choice than a necessity. Some parts of my life have required rebuilding more than once.
But rebuilding has also given me a clearer sense of what matters.
I returned to school as an adult and discovered that education felt very different when I was choosing it for myself. I am still working toward what comes next academically while balancing work, family, art, and community commitments.
I am also a mother and caregiver in ways I never could have predicted when I was younger. My family has taught me that love can be complicated, exhausting, joyful, imperfect, and worth showing up for again and again.
I do not think resilience means pretending difficult things did not happen. For me, it has meant continuing to build a life that feels more intentional, more honest, and more like my own.
Starting over has become less about beginning again and more about choosing what I carry forward.
A FEW THINGS ABOUT ME
I like people, puzzles, art, and figuring things out.
Not everything has to become a project, a job, or a statement. Some things are simply part of the life I enjoy building around myself.
ART AROUND ME
Collector at heart
I have built a personal art collection filled mostly with work by local artists, along with pieces from artists I have discovered and followed online or when traveling. Living with other people’s work is one of my favorite ways to stay connected to creativity.
PUZZLES + LEGO
I like figuring things out
I collect and build LEGO sets, love puzzles, and genuinely enjoy the process of taking something complicated apart in my head and working out how the pieces fit together.
ALWAYS LEARNING
Curiosity usually wins
I am happiest when I am learning something new. Whether it is printmaking, a new material, a new tool, a new idea, or simply learning more about another person, curiosity tends to pull me forward.
HOME LIFE
Cats included
I have always had cats in my life, and my current three are very much part of the household. Home, for me, usually includes art on the walls, something half-finished on a table, books nearby, and at least one cat reminding me that their bowl is not quite full.
WHAT COMES NEXT
I am still figuring out what comes next, and that's okay.
I do not have a tidy ending for this page because I do not think I am finished becoming whoever I am going to be. There are still things I want to make, learn, understand, experience, and get better at. For now, that feels like enough direction.