Toshiko MacAdam facts for kids

Toshiko MacAdam (born Toshiko Horiuchi) is a Japanese artist. She lives in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is famous for her big textile artworks. These include "textile playgrounds" for kids. They are bright, net-like structures made from crocheted and knotted nylon.

Life and Career

Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam is a top fibre artist in Canada and Japan. She uses knitting, crochet, and knot making to create her art. Today, she focuses on making large, interactive textile spaces.

MacAdam was born in Japan in 1940. Her family moved to Japanese-controlled Manchuria during World War II. In 1945, the Soviet Union took over the area. MacAdam and her family had to leave and went back to Japan. Later, MacAdam studied at the Tama Fine Art Institute in Japan. She then went to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. There, she earned her master's degree in fine arts.

After college, MacAdam worked for Boris Kroll Fabrics. This was a well-known textile design company in New York City. She then taught at many universities. These included the Columbia University Teachers College and the University of Georgia.

Today, MacAdam teaches a course called "Fiber Fabric Fashion" at NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She also runs Interplay Design and Manufacturing. She works with her husband, Charles MacAdam, in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia.

Her Amazing Artworks

Early Art Creations

MacAdam's early art is often called 'fibre art'. This type of art became popular in the 1970s. Two of her early important pieces are 'Fibre Columns/Romanesque Church' and 'Atmosphere of the Floating Cube'. These works were important in the fibre art movement. They were even shown in famous art books.

One book described how she knit many gold and silver threads. She stretched them into curved shapes. Then she put them together to make a cube. With bright lights, she made the whole thing glow. In these early works, MacAdam showed she loved working on a big scale. This made her different from many other textile artists back then.

Fun Textile Playgrounds

MacAdam is most known for her large textile structures. She got the idea for textile playgrounds when she saw kids climbing on one of her sculptures. She realized children loved to interact with her art. She then noticed there were not many parks or playgrounds in Tokyo. She saw this was not good for kids.

In 1971, she made her first artwork for children. It was given to a kindergarten in Tokyo. She showed her next piece at the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto.

In the early 1970s, MacAdam's art changed. It went from just fibre art to interactive spaces. Her colors also changed from soft tones to a bright rainbow. This happened around the time her son was born. She also moved to Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1988.

In 1979, MacAdam worked with Fumiaki Takano. He was a landscape architect. They created another large play space for a new national park in Okinawa. She was then asked to make a similar one for the Hakone Open-Air Museum. These projects helped her start working with nylon.

Her crocheted playground structures are built in parts by a team. They can use "tons" of nylon! Her research on public play spaces helped her understand how playgrounds help children grow. Her structures let kids take safe risks and explore. They are designed to help children use their imagination.

In 1990, MacAdam started a business with her husband, Charles MacAdam. It is called Interplay Design and Manufacturing. They work on art projects from Bridgetown, Nova Scotia.

MacAdam's textile playgrounds are now all over the world. You can find them in Spain, Singapore, Shanghai, New Zealand, and Seoul.

Materials She Uses

For her earlier works, MacAdam used a Japanese material called Vinylon. It was strong, but not as good as the nylon she uses now. She crochets and dyes the nylon herself at her studio.

MacAdam makes most of her playscape structures by hand. Some parts have machine-knotted elements. Every piece she makes is unique. She has said that the architecture of Antonio Gaudi and Iranian mosques inspire her structural textile work.

Where Her Art Has Been Shown

MacAdam has shown her textile art in museums and galleries. These include places in Asia, North America, and Europe. Her art has been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It has also been shown at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto in Japan. Other places include the Palais des congrès de Paris in France and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Her art has also been seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila in the Philippines. You can find it at The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma in Japan. She has also shown art at the OliOli Children's Museum in Dubai. Her textile sculpture, “Atmosphere of the Floating Cube,” is owned by the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art. It was part of a show about modern Japanese textile artists.

MacAdam has also designed textiles for stage shows. The Nonoichi City Culture Center has a big curtain she made called “Luminous.”

In 2013, MacAdam worked with Charles MacAdam and Norihide Imagawa. They created a work called Harmonic Motion. It was for a show in Rome, Italy. This artwork explores how our bodies interact with space and materials. This idea is often seen in her architectural art.