Sizz Handmade

New transparency-woven candles + holders for this year’s Hudson Mohawk Weavers Guild Show & Sale!
Flax, hand-spun wool, silk, and plant dyes come alive in the flame — like sheep, birds, and flowers drifting through the glow.
A tiny bit of magic for winter nights. ✨

"Voices of the Spitzer Building" (2004) This piece won
Best in Show, and is also part of the permanent collection of the Albany Institute of History & Art

This piece was created for Historic Albany’s annual exhibition, Vacancy, now Built. It was a meditation on how the stories embedded in architecture evolve over time. My work centered on the former City Arts Building, which later became 17 Chapel, a luxury condominium property by the Rosenblum Companies. In 1977, that same building housed the Albany Center Gallery, a space that nurtured countless artists — and just a few months after completing this piece, I would step into the role of Executive Director there.

Each small panel in this work is the size of an index card, referencing the old City of Albany employee labor record cards once stored there — physical traces of people whose efforts built the city, both literally and culturally. Other fragments include poems once written on the building’s stairways, remnants from art installations when it was the City Arts Building and many other stories that left a trace.

Though I hadn’t yet discovered tapestry weaving yet, the impulse behind this piece was already woven through my creative practice: a fascination with memory, material, and the layered histories that shape place.

Time has transformed the building, but the echoes remain — a reminder that every wall, every story, and every hand that built or painted or dreamed inside that space continues to resonate.