Deborah Valoma

Artist Statement: "I first learned to knit in Jerusalem from a Polish refugee of the Holocaust. I learned to stitch lace from my grandmother, descendant of Armenian survivors of the Turkish massacres. I learned to twine basketry from one of the few living masters of Native American basket weaving in California. These dedicated women tenaciously pass the threads of survival forward. When their memory fails, my hands remember. My hands trace the breathless pause when I teeter on the sharp edge of sorrow and beauty."

Selected collections and exhibition venues:
Textile Museum, Washington, D.C. (The Kimono Inspiration); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Made in California: 1900-2000); De Young Museum of Art, San Francisco, California (Artwear: Fashion and Anti-Fashion); Blanden Memorial Art Museum, Iowa (Needle Art, a Postmodern Sewing Circle, traveling exhibition); Montclair State University, New Jersey (Art of Substance); Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin (Basketworks: The Cotsen Contemporary American Basket Collection) Honolulu Museum of Art (A Thousand Words and Counting).
Artist-in-Residence: Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, Oregon;
Performance: Longing; Line of Sighs, with coreographer Victor Alexander, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Musum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
Author: “Cloth and African Identity in Bahia, Brazil," Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion; “Dust Chronicles," Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture; Scrape the Willow Until It Sings: The Words and Work of Basket Maker Julia Parker.