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CHERE LAI MAH

I was born in 1948, the fifth of six children born to Cheung Wai Fong (Li Zhang Huifang) and Hobart Lai in Fresno, California. I attended the University of California at Berkeley, creating an independent major of Sculpture and Textiles under Ed Rossbach. During these years I studied historic textiles in the Design Department’s Textile Collection and at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, Ma.

In 1974, I was a Rockefeller Fellow in Museum Education and Community Studies and developed papermaking techniques to be used in classrooms.

As a staff member of Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts I collaborated with fellow innovative artists in our emerging field. My own work involved installation and performance using found and natural materials. This work culminated in exhibits at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Honolulu Academy of Art. In the late nineties, supported by an NEA grant, I worked with Susan Wick on local public art mosaic projects with hundreds of participants.

In recent years I have focused on archiving materials and oral histories tied to the hundreds of cheongsams given to me by various family members including my mother and mother-in-law. This project has produced two exhibitions: one in 2001 at the University of California at Davis’s Design Gallery and another at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Also, two books: one based on the 2001 exhibition, and Genealogy in Silk, which includes more family history, photographs, and textile information. PDFs can be purchased at http://www.cherelaimah.com.