Lydia Predominato—Meticulous Innovator
An interview with Gail Spilsbury Lydia Predominato’s career as a fiber artist began in 1976, not long after the fiber art field made its entrée in the late ’60s. Almost fifty years later, her award-winning, innovative pieces stand among the best work created by Italian fiber artists. Prolific in her ideas and output, Predominato pioneered new directions in the fast-advancing fiber art movement, while at the same time reintroducing the art of weaving to Rome’s fashion design school, L’Accademia Koefia, where she still teaches. Her home studio in Rome’s Garbatella neighborhood showcases the chronology of her artistic explorations. The room also houses a substantial floor loom positioned next to a smaller lever loom —icons to her profession. GS: Lydia, I have many questions to ask you, but seeing the soft, delicate scarf in production on your lever loom, I wonder how you do it all—the weaving, the teaching, the gallery artwork, and al