ANDREA SLAVIN
EMAIL: slavin678@icloud.com
BIO
I was born in Los Angeles and fell in love with colors early on. I remember a kindergarten art project made with sprinkled hot pink and turquoise tempera and a lot of the colorful clothes from my childhood closet.
My Hungarian grandmother had been a dress designer in New York City, and I grew up surrounded by silk fabrics, dress parts, lace and other notions left over from her business. We used to go fabric shopping together and I kept some of the wonderful clothes she made me.
My mother also sewed beautifully (but I did not). She made at least one outfit for my Barbie doll with tiny buttons on it. Although Barbie bored me, I did like the clothes!
As a teenager in the 1960's-1970's I embroidered, made beaded necklaces, patched my jeans, made brightly colored pencil drawings trying to emulate Peter Max's style and taught myself macramé. I had a belt woven on an inkle loom and that inspired me to learn how to weave.
In college I decided I did not want to become a social worker after all, changed my major to art and got a B.A. at San Francisco State University. Later I attended Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts in Berkeley. As a student I learned multiple kinds of on and off loom techniques, dyeing, spinning and card weaving.
The mid 1970's was an exciting time to study textiles in the Bay Area because there were so many schools to choose from and multiple retail stores available. I bought supplies from Dharma Trading Company, Straw Into Gold, Naturalcraft, Handcraft from Europe and Kasuri Dyeworks. Creative Handweavers on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles was also a resource.
After college I taught some textile classes to adults before eventually working full time at various jobs that mostly had nothing to do with art or textiles. Several years later I started attending exhibits and taking classes at the Craft Contemporary museum. That led to meeting Carrie Burkle and other TALA teachers. It's been wonderful learning new ways to be creative and having more time to make things.