Magda, 32, was born and spent most of her childhood in Poland, where she passed many happy hours in her grandfather’s tailor shop. “I learned to sew on his wonderful, pedal-driven machine. I even managed to sew through my finger once, but it didn’t deter me.”
   Her family immigrated to Canada when she was 12. She always gravitated toward art, but hit a dry spell after graduating from college. “I didn’t create any work for close to a year,” she recalls. “In art school, you face the insistence that you have a clear concept for your work before you begin. I found it discouraging. Eventually, I got over it and just started making work without over-thinking it. My work has to be intuitive. If I plan too much, it will never happen.”



(e) “Even though I don’t start with any concepts, they often emerge after the fact. There’s a definite contrast between freedom and restriction in ‘Mr. Elephant.’ The balloons want to carry him away, but he’s held down by the weight of the ball, and by the box he’s in.”

(f) Magda is fascinated with Halloween partly because she sees it as a fun, stress-free holiday. “Unlike Christmas, there’s no pressure to buy the right gift or to hang out with family. The funny thing is, I’ve never been to a Halloween party, never even dressed up as a kid.” (g) To give her figures their distinctive antique appearance, she uses a crackling medium.

(h) The antique doll bed, a garage-sale find, became the basis for what will be one of her most complicated pieces. “I want to suggest that the balloons will pick up the bed and make it float away. It ties into my fascination with dreams.”

Originally published in the October/November 2007 issue

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