Teaching

Any material creative practice, even in its most physical and intimate form, is a question asked and answered simultaneously. This is not to suggest that all making is necessarily textual or theoretical, but rather to stress that all making comes from certain needs and concerns. Making is a behavior that is continuously performed and repositioned. In that sense, the maker is never alone and is always engaged in a constant, changing dialogue—or, using Tim Ingold’s ample term, is in correspondence with oneself and the world.

As a teacher, my essential role is to support students in revealing and articulating their correspondences with the world. Such articulation develops awareness of one’s own practice and its consequences to other practices and people who are making, sensing, reflecting, questioning, and responding. As makers and thinkers, we produce (co)responsive knowledge: an awareness and experience of interdependent living, which is essential in times such as ours, when the capacity to live on is questioned, even shattered.

I studied textile design (weaving) and art, and modern Jewish studies in Israel and the UK. In my practice-based PhD (Goldsmiths, London, 2014) I studied 19th century German Jewish ritual textiles to develop a model of imbuing historical craft artifacts with contemporary relevance through rigorous creative research.

The approach I developed in the PhD served me as a platform to design courses in the history of craft and textiles, as well as creative research seminars for BA students of textile art and design in Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art in Israel where I taught between 2007 to 2017. I was honored to head the department of Textile Design there between 2013 and 2017, further implementing the approach via collaborations with other design departments and the Program of Cultural Studies.

In the early stages of my career I worked in the industry as a weaving designer for interior textiles. This experience was very important for my understanding of the history and structures of the contemporary textile industry and was instrumental, alongside my research activity in creating courses in textile design and mixed media pattern and surface design, fusing manual and digital techniques and positioning the creative work of textile designers in the wider contexts of material culture and global industry. Over ten years in Shenkar I have mentored dozens of textile students for graduation projects dealing with diverse subject matter and creative formats, striving to foster significant creative research and genuine personal interest and growth.

After immigrating to the USA in 2017 I took a much needed break from the academy and taught in the Twin Cities in alternative educational settings.

In 2021-22 as a visiting teaching artist I taught Mixed Media, Individual Projects, Textiles and Collaboration classes for 9-12 grades students as part of the Visual Art department curriculum at the St Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists.

Between 2020 and 2022 I worked as an online Continuing Education instructor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where I taught courses on digital pattern and surface design and creative pattern design. I also taught introductory Photoshop classes for craft oriented students at the Minnesota Textile Centre.