Linda Kay Benning has been on a fiber journey her entire life exploring work done primarily by women. She believes their fiber work enriched their lives with color and beauty. Often their skills provided supplementary income for the family, regardless of which continent they resided on. “I am an inch deep and a mile wide in the realm of fiber arts, focusing primarily on the heritage skills,” she recently explained. “My understanding and appreciation grows every time I try something new, often laughing when I examine my first attempt.” She is an active member of the EGA, Chesapeake Region Lace Guild, the International Organization of Lace, Inc., the Bobbin and Needle Lace Organization, Smocking Arts of America, and the local Nelly’s Needlers that support the Woodlawn Needle Arts Show annually.
Kathy Draves
Kathy Draves has been making lace on and off since the mid-1990s. She has dabbled in many different styles but particularly enjoys the point ground laces. In 2018 Kathy curated an exhibit of lace items in the collection of the Huntington Historical Society in Long Island NY which was well received by the public, and demonstrated bobbin lacemaking at several events held at the venue in conjunction with the exhibition.
While working in the Conservation Lab at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Katherine Dunlevey was asked to participate in the rehousing project of the lace collection. As a weaver and textile artist who spent many years documenting the weaving methods of the Southeast Asian countries, the interlocking and weaving of the lace threads led to new exploration and a fascination with the techniques of lace. Katherine is on the Executive Council of OIDFA, an international lace organization.
Glorimar Garcia is a Brooklyn visual artist, curator, and arts administrator. Born and raised in Ohio, she studied Painting and Art History at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Rooted in personal experience and research, her work explores aspects of identity, memory, culture and gender. Garcia merges materials and found objects, salvaging discarded items like baseball cards to explore and manipulate their meaning. Significant projects include Cards for Puerto Rico, a benefit exhibition following the devastating hurricanes in 2017, and working with the Kurt Kocherscheidt Estate to create the first digital database of the artist’s work.
Ellyane Hutchinson, bio forthcoming.
Elena Kanagy-Loux was raised by Mennonites in Tokyo, where she was surrounded by traditional craft and DIY fashion. After receiving her BFA in Textile Design from FIT, she won a grant which funded a four-month trip to study lacemaking across Europe. Upon returning to NYC, she co-founded the Brooklyn Lace Guild, and began teaching bobbin lace classes at the Textile Arts Center. She recently completed her MA in Costume Studies at NYU where she wrote her thesis on modern lacemaking culture. Currently she is a lace specialist and consultant for institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Layla Klinger is a hole maker, working with fiber, light and electric currents to investigate intimacy, erotic compulsions and beauty as merit. Their work spans installations and precious objects, and is based in traditional lace making as means of useless and coveted labor. She created site specific installations for the Little Islands Festival (Sikinos, Greece), New York Public Library (NYC), FRATZ Festival (Berlin) and Nightlight Festival (Tel Aviv), and has exhibited across the US and Tel Aviv. They received their MFA in Textiles from Parsons School of Design, where they are currently an adjunct faculty member.
Cynthia Madsen has been making art with thread and textiles since she was a young child. She learned to crochet from her maternal grandmother, embroider from her paternal grandmother, and her mother taught her how to knit and sew. Cynthia started making lace as a young teen when her maternal grandmother taught her to tat and then quickly started experimenting making crocheted lace. In 2006 Cynthia took her first bobbin lace class and found it creatively, sensually, and intellectually stimulating. Everything about bobbin lace making is beautiful—the threads, the bobbins, the sounds, the possibilities!
Patricia Miranda is a textile installation artist, curator, educator, and founder of The Crit Lab and MAPSpace. In 2021 she founded the Lace Archive, an historical community archive of thousands of donated lace works and family histories. Her work has been exhibited at Jane Street Art Center, Garrison Art Center (Hudson Valley, NY) ODETTA Gallery, The Clemente Center, ABC No Rio, and Wave Hill (NYC); The Alexey von Schlippe Gallery at UConn Avery Point, (Groton, CT). Upcoming exhibitions include the Peg Center for Art+Activism, the Lyman Allyn Museum, and a solo exhibition at 3S Art Center in Portsmouth NH.
Kasuni Rathnasuriya is the founding designer of KÚR, a contemporary clothing label which incorporates handmade Sri Lankan bobbin lace in the signature line. She is the winner of the British Council’s Young Fashion Entrepreneur (YFE) 2011. Her work has been featured in renowned outlets such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire and WWD. Kasuni has been active in global fashion events with her collections being showcased at IMG NYFW, Portland Fashion Week, Sunshine Coast Fashion Festival, Southbank London etc. Published work at www.kurcollection.com / IG : kurnewyork
Cajah Reed learned tatting while volunteering at Four Mile Historic Park, an 1860’s reenactment estate, where she formed a connection with Freda Stevenson (amazing lace teacher) and the Rocky Mountain Lace Guild. She furthered her lace learning over the years through classes on many types of bobbin lace and design, tatting with the Shuttle Brothers, wire lace, as well as needlelace. Cajah is also part of The Adventurous Lacemakers and Brooklyn Lace Guild. Born and raised in Georgia, Cajah has lived an equal amount of her life in Colorado, where she currently resides.
Devon Thein
Devon Thein has been making bobbin lace since 1971. She has published over 50 articles about lace history, lacemaking, and the lace community. For two decades she has been a lace volunteer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, responsible for re-cataloguing their 5,000-piece lace collection. She is the guest curator for a show, Lace, not Lace: Contemporary Fiber Art from Lacemaking Techniques which will open Sept. 23, 2018 at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, NJ.
Karen Thompson has made, studied, and taught lace since the mid-1970s. From 1998 to present she has been a volunteer curator of the lace collection at the Smithsonian American History Museum, where she has developed and conducted Behind-the-Scenes tours of the lace collection, written six blogs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) about specific areas or objects in the collection, and been instrumental in making part of the Lace Collection available to the public on the Smithsonian website (1, 2, 3). In 2017 she published The Lace Samples from Ipswich, Massachusetts 1789-1790. The book has a short introductory overview of the history of the Ipswich lace industry in the late 18th century followed by reconstructed detailed patterns and working diagrams for the 22 lace samples sent to Alexander Hamilton in 1790 from Ipswich, MA for his Census of Manufactures as evidence of the importance of lacemaking In Ipswich. Virtual teaching was added in 2020.
More member bios are coming soon!