Toshiko MacAdam

Toshiko MacAdam (born Toshiko Horiuchi) is a Japanese textile artist based in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is best known for her work with large-scale textile structures, especially "textile playgrounds" for children, brightly-colored net-like structures of crocheted and knotted nylon.

Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam is a leading fibre artist in Canada and Japan, using knitting, crochet, and knot making techniques to create her work. Currently, her work focuses on creating large, interactive textile environments.

MacAdam was born in Japan in 1940 but soon moved to Japanese-occupied Manchuria with her family during World War II. When the Soviet Union took over the area in 1945, MacAdam and her family were forced to flee and eventually returned to Japan. Later, MacAdam attended the Tama Fine Art Institute in Japan and went on to study in the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where she received her masters of fine arts degree. After graduating, MacAdam worked for Boris Kroll Fabrics, an acclaimed textile design company in New York City. She then went on to teach at universities across the United States and Japan, including the Columbia University Teachers College, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the University of Georgia and the Kyoto Junior College of Art.

Currently, MacAdam teaches a textiles and fashion course entitled "Fiber Fabric Fashion" at NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and runs Interplay Design and Manufacturing with her husband, Charles MacAdam, in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia.

MacAdam’s work is often described as 'fibre art' which became a widely accepted art form in the 1970s. 'Fibre Columns/Romanesque Church' and 'Atmosphere of the Floating Cube' are two early pieces by the artist that were influential in the fibre art movement, and were featured in books such as 'The Art Fabric Mainstream' by Mildred Constantine & Jack Lenor Larsen. There they describe how 'she knit hundreds of gold and silver lengths, stretched them into concave panels, and composed them as a cube. Then, with powerful knee-height floodlights, she transformed the whole into a haloed radiance.' In these works, Horiuchi MacAdam established her affinity for working on a large scale, differentiating her from many other textile and fibre artists of the time.

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