top of page

I am a multi-disciplinary artist who makes weavings, sculptures and drawings. Through my studio I commune with the unknown. My work springs from deep study of Jewish texts in mysticism, creation, cosmology and divinity. In Jewish thought, individual meaning-making is an act that allows one to experience the mystical greater whole. My relationship to intellectual and ethical struggle leads me to the medium and form for each object I make. My process is both methodical and non-linear, seeking to address crucial questions with spacious, open-ended answers and more questions. In my studio, beauty and intricacy are paths to explore Jewish art historical traditions where elaborate handcrafts express infinity and sacredness. Time creates an intensity that is held within the object. 

I practice devotion and humility through craft, with acts of repetition and return that require touch and nurturing. I work with living materials that undertake a physical state of transformation as they are worked. I weave intricate textiles using a variety of looms and dye sculptures woven with basket reed. Ongoing interlacement and iterative dips in the indigo vat are forms of return that create their midnight blue color and form. I have grown indigo from seed to plant to cultivate a deeper sense of intimacy and to communicate my respect for the material. I spin raw wool, cotton and silk into thread with centrifugal force, rhythmic hands and a spinning wheel and drop spindle. I dye materials with natural and procion fiber reactive dyes, merging the chemical pursuit of color with history, the natural world and labor. In my drawings, I bring together the conceptual and the physical by designing tapestries and exploring abstraction and positive and negative space for sculptural work. I flame and cold work glass, sculpting it as it shifts between states of softness and hardness. Glass’ humbling and dynamic qualities are met with determination and steadiness. To realize one particular strong and delicate kinetic metal sculpture, I worked with an assistant to fabricate the work with CNC cutting, welding and powder coating. I feel reciprocity and fluidity when working with these materials, which allows me to maintain my studio as a space of play, where curiosity and the unexpected propel me forward. I value synergistic mediums where the artist must surrender to the terms of practices that cannot be forced or dominated. The artist must coax, be patient, and remain open.

This moment contains tremendous possibilities for Jewish art. I am among a tireless and growing movement of artists building structural support for a flourishing Jewish cultural renaissance in the diaspora. My studio practice is a contemporary hiddush or a novel interpretation of Jewish intellectual and spiritual thought. I work to create culture that is expansive, liberatory and life affirming and to show new ways of understanding collectivity and belonging. I affirm that change is possible and take my place in the struggle towards this future in my studio. I dedicate my life’s work to this process of creation where I shape and am shaped in return.

© Olive Stefanski. 

 

bottom of page