About me
Given my genetic code, becoming a fiber artist was inevitable.
My mother was an exquisite embroiderer, my aunt a talented clothing designer. My father worked in a sweatshop that manufactured luxury woolen coats and suits. As an immigrant who escaped Poland just when Hitler was coming into power, he worked hard, earned little, and I promised both him and myself that education was the only path forward to a better life.
I earned a degree at McGill University and my first job was teaching at the Montreal School for the Blind. It was not long before I discovered that weaving would be a natural for visually impaired children. I immediately set out to learn the craft.
That was the beginning of my love for textiles and soon after, the end of my teaching career.
After taking weaving classes and giving birth to three babies in two years, the long winters and the chaos of raising all these babies drove me to the loom at every opportunity. My strong attraction to fiber made me realize that my genes made me do it. When I began to weave one of a kind jackets, the irony that my father’s trade, which filled me with sorrow knowing how unfulfilled he was, was not lost on me. I was now in the “rag trade”, just like him. I glorified it because by this time it was called by a new name- Wearable Art!
My life as a weaver was rewarding: from designing, to joining my fellow craftspeople at juried shows around the country, to having the honor of selling to an appreciative audience (among them the NOTORIOUS RBG), to occasionally winning awards.
Forty years later I transitioned from weaving to fiber art, a term that encompasses all techniques, from stitching, felting, paper making, twining, coiling, crocheting, knitting, dyeing, printing, netting- the list goes on. I want to learn it all. Freed from having to create what will sell, it is just me and my imagination.
The possibilities are endless.