User:Artful inquiry/sandbox/ArtandCraftWomen/Gyöngy Laky

Gyöngy Laky (1944 to the present) is mixed media and fiber artist and teacher. A leader in the fields of basketry and fiber arts, she expanded the boundaries of these fields through the development of dramatic new installations and the use of new kinds of materials. She is particularly well known in the areas of: 1) installations; 2) wordworks; and 3) basketry.   She was a founder of the Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts in Berkeley, California in 1973, one of two textile arts centers in the Bay Area, which helped to place the Bay Area at the epicenter of the fiberarts renaissance of the 1970’s.  She was also a founding member of the National Basketry Organization.   She was a faculty member in the Art Department at the University of California Davis from 1978 to 2005.  She has won numerous awards including the National Endowment for the Arts Award of Distinction.  Her works have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world and are held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Modern Museum of Art among others.

Early Life
Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944, she immigrated to the United States as a young child. She attended public schools in Carmel, California and received her bachelor's and master's degree (1971) from the University of California in Berkeley. While a student there, she studied with Ed Rossbach, a professor of design, noted for his basketry work. Subsequently, she spent a year in India studying in the University of California Professional Studies in India Program (1971-1972). Her early life is chronicled in an interview conducted by the Smithsonian

Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts
Shortly after her return to the United States from India, she played a leading role in the development of a new fiberarts center in the Berkeley area. Founded in 1973, the Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts played a pivotal role in the fiberarts movement of the 1970's, serving as a place where artists could gather, exhibit their work, and learn the skills of this interdisciplinary art form that mixed craft and high art. Laky served as director of the center from its inception in 1973 to 1977. In addition to classes, artist study and critique groups, the center provided an important venue for the showing of examples of the emerging fiberarts products. It sponsored numerous gallery shows including the 1978 three-day symposium organized by fiber artist Wendy Kashiwa that attracted 475 participants from the United States and abroad. Attempts to increase stability and longevity of the center through integration into established college programs were not successful and the center was ultimately forced to close 1987.