My Journey from Moldova to Mural and Textile Art
Since I can remember myself, ART has always been with me — not just in my hands, but in my mind, in the rhythm of home, and in the quiet hum of my mother’s sewing machine. I didn’t know I would become an artist, let alone one who burns fabric as a form of expression. But every thread I have touched, from Moldova to Florida, has led me here.
My Mother, the Loom, and the Singer Machine
As far back as I can remember, I was by my mother’s side. During the long Moldovan winters, she wove rugs, hand towels, and other decorative pieces using a horizontal bass loom. The shuttle’s rhythm, the scent of wool, the gentle murmurs of her concentration — these were my childhood symphonies.
She also sewed clothes on a Singer sewing machine, its firm clatter echoing through our home. I would sit beside her, watching fabric glide beneath the needle as if it had a life of its own. That Singer machine, now considered vintage, would mean so much to me today. I wish I could have kept it. It holds the story of so many moments stitched into time.
The Scent of Wool
I grew up in the countryside, surrounded by sheep, animals, and the earthy rhythm of rural life. I still remember the distinct smell of wool — warm, raw, and comforting.
Photo: Margareta Curtescu
The Turning Point in Chisinau
In 1990, I went to Kyiv with hopes of studying restoration arts. But after failing the USSR history exam, a mandatory hurdle, I returned to Chisinau. At the time, it felt like a setback. But life, like fabric, often folds and twists before it reveals its pattern.
My best friend had just started studying textile arts at the Academy of Music, Theater, and Fine Arts. She was weaving decorative designs in her studio, and I was fascinated. I began making similar projects in my spare time, and a year later, I was admitted to the same program. There, I immersed myself in drawing, painting, batik art, and weaving in various techniques. My diploma project was a 7x9-foot hand-woven tapestry, later acquired by a local collector, Anatol Dumitrascu. I loved textile art deeply. But I also loved drawing and painting. I didn’t want to choose, and I never have.
Where Weaving Begins
Weaving came naturally to me, I could feel every thread. I loved spending long hours watching my hands move in rhythm with the colorful threads. It was peaceful and meditative.
Textile Art with a Painter’s Soul
Even as I wove threads into structured patterns, I stayed rooted in the mindset of a painter. For me, fabric was never just a surface, it was a narrative. A canvas that invited the same emotion, gesture, and depth as paint. Perhaps that is why, after moving to Florida, I transitioned into painting. Walls, too, became fabric.
A New Language of Fabric and Flame
When I enrolled in the MFA program at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, I began with painting. But soon, I realized it wasn’t fulfilling what I needed most. I was feeling a deep nostalgia for home and searching for a sense of spiritual grounding. I began reading about personal freedom and inner peace, and gradually, I felt a strong pull toward working with fabric instead. It became a tactile way to process what I was feeling.
One day, overwhelmed by the darkness in my paintings, I cleared out my studio and chose to start fresh. I didn’t reach for fancy art supplies. Instead, I brought in what felt right: simple white fabrics from craft stores like JoAnn’s and Walmart. I began creating decorative designs with white paint on white synthetic fabric, letting the simplicity and purity of the materials guide me.
Letting the Material Speak
While scorching some threads with a matchstick on the back of the frame, I watched the fabric melt in a way that felt like a revelation. The textures, the raw, scorched beauty, it was unlike anything I had seen before. I soon began using the flame intentionally, drawing, sculpting, and painting with it. The flame became my brush. It all came so naturally.
Why White Fabric? Why Flame?
At the time, I craved peace. I was an immigrant in a new country, learning the language, meeting new people, and facing heartbreaks and disappointments. The white fabric represented stillness, silence, and peace, the space I was trying to create within myself.
The flame became a metaphor: a way of shaping through pain. Scorching, for me, mirrored the human journey, raw, unpredictable, sometimes destructive, but always transformative. There was so much beauty in it.
Sculpting with Fire: A New Beginning
My final MFA show featured these flame-sculpted fabrics. The response was overwhelming — viewers connected, and some curators approached me, inviting me to exhibit. That feedback became my fuel.
Closing: A Journey Still Unfolding
Looking back, every phase of my life has been stitched into the work I create today, from the hum of my mother’s Singer to the whisper of flame on fabric. My art is not just a practice. It’s a remembering, a healing, a declaration that even the most fragile materials, just like people, can hold immense strength and meaning.
And I continue. Still weaving. Still scorching. Still listening to where the thread wants to go next.
