born: Gdynia, Poland
resides: Cambridge, MA, USA
travel: Poland, USA, Canada, Norway, Sweden
education:
MFA 2D Design, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI, USA
BA Philosophy+Crtical Theory, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Maine Summer Institute in Graphic Design, Maine College of Art, Portland, ME, USA
also studied at UT Austin, Austin, TX and UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
employment:
VisuaLingual, Cambridge, MA, USA
Assistant Professor, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA, USA
Visiting Assistant Professor, Herron School of Art, Indianapolis, IN, USA
Instructor, Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, MI, USA
Associate Art Director, Agency.com, New York, NY, USA
Graphic Designer, Tripod, Inc., Williamstown, MA, USA
Interface Designer, SBI and Company, Sausalito, CA, USA
I was born in Poland and came to the US at age 11, embarking on a desperate program of assimilation. I'd been brought up on classical music and classic literature, in a Roman Catholic household in which children were seen, not heard. The streets of "my America" were paved with gold and filled with cowboys driving Rolls Royces. My first experiences with American pop culture, and with adolescence, were John Hughes' The Breakfast Club, Madonna's Like a Virgin, and Cindy Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Adolescence and Americanness have been conflated ever since.
I moved from Greenpoint to Glenwood Projects in East Flatbush and became a "white girl in the hood", repeatedly fighting my way out of Special Ed. and ESL, and trying to just fit in. I practiced speaking English in the corner of my room every day after school, until my dreaded accent was gone. I focused more on my poverty than my Polish heritage; the challenge was to get out of the hood. As soon as I was able to leave, I did. I was running away from the negative forces I didn't understand and couldn't control, and I only recently realized that I've also been running away from myself.
Now, it seems, I "fit in" so much so that no one knows my otherness unless I choose to share it. It seems that I'm the only one who realizes the extent of my difference from those around me. I still can't imagine ever giving up my Polish citizenship for a US one, although I'm too scared to ever return to Gdynia.