I began knitting after my mother died in 2003. It was a way to bind my grief. My mother had been an expert handworker expressing herself through knitting, sewing, needlepoint, and crochet. Beyond my grief, I began to look at knitting as an art medium. The first piece I made was Eins Un Tsvei, a four-foot color wheel. The title is a Yiddish phrase that is loosely translated as "hurry" or the English phrase "one, two, three." It is a title filled with irony, as knitting is not immediate, but does involve a lot of counting. By making a traditional art tool I had declared that knitting was part of my art lexicon. I then turned to knitting for the intricate structures it creates. I am fascinated by the idea that one simple thread can form a complex fabric, but cut the thread at any spot and the entire system unravels.

My current work is the outgrowth of a series of installations that used wooden blocks that were set up as elaborate domino patterns. Obstacles, Inhibitions and Consequential Actions: 452 Blocks was a piece that had pairs of words hammered into the two faces of the wood. They included "resist/relent," "allergy/affinity" and "Topanga/Inglewood." Although the words were predominantly in English, some were Korean, Vietnamese, Persian, Yiddish, German, Spanish and Hindi.

The new work continues the exploration of mapped pattern, the inter-relatedness of life and the notion of consequential actions. A recent work, Fascia, is a 10.5-foot by 17-foot outdoor installation. Knit out of 170-pound hemp twine, this large overhang hovers above a concrete pad painted ultramarine blue. The shadows cast by the knitting turn industrial concrete into a shimmering pool of water. The exhibition at Santa Monica College examines the on-going themes of interconnectivity and consequence in the context of a college campus. Two of the knitted sculptures' titles reference graduation; one is Pomp, a delicate and undulating representation of education and students' progress within that system. The second piece is &Circumstance, a ponderous and stately work that refers to the conditions into which a student is born.

My artistic influences are Christo for his use of scale and space; Robert Irwin for his relationship to light; my mother, Dina Kagan for her dedication to the highest level of craft; Judy Chicago because of her vision, and Eva Hesse for her knowledge of materials and the immaterial.