Yvonne Pacanovsky Bobrowicz, transformative fiber artist and longtime Drexel adjunct professor, has died at 94
She was fascinated with how light and movement could affect her pieces, and her cascading sculptures of hand-knotted fibers were simultaneously opaque and translucent.
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Yvonne Pacanovsky Bobrowicz, 94, of Philadelphia, award-winning transformative fiber artist and longtime adjunct professor at Drexel University, died Saturday, Sept. 17, of cancer at her home in Center City.
Celebrated for her innovative cascading sculptures of hand-knotted, light-transmitting synthetic monofilaments interwoven with natural light-absorbent fibers of all kinds and colors, Ms. Bobrowicz created works of simultaneous substance and translucency. Over the course of her 72-year career, she moved away from her roots as a traditional weaver and created three-dimensional pieces that she described as “cosmic energy fields” and “philosophical sculpture.”
She was interested, she said in her artist biographies, in “relating opposites” and illustrating “the duality in nature: dark and light, positive and negative.” She became familiar with the physics of particles and theories of how light, space, time, and movement are connected, and her weaving skills, she said in a 2017 online interview with Philly Stewards, “allows me to explore these ideas in a dynamic and kinetic manner, through the illumination of the material and the way it moves.”
Inquirer art critic Edward J. Sozanski reviewed her work at a 1994 exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Alliance and said: “Bobrowicz’s sculptures transform simple materials into sculptures that express mass with extreme delicacy. Her segment of the show is perhaps the most enchanting despite her economy of means.”
Her flowing creations, some nearly 10 feet long and embellished with gold leaf, are often suspended and have been shown locally and around the world in dozens of solo and group exhibitions. They were commissioned for display in banks, hotels, universities, condominiums, and corporate headquarters, and also reside in the permanent collections of individuals and museums such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Racine Museum of Art in Wisconsin, and the National Museum of Sweden in Stockholm.
She studied with the famed textile artist Anni Albers at the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Art, now the University of the Arts, in the 1950s, collaborated with iconic Philadelphia architects Louis Kahn and Anne Tyng in the 1970s, and her “Cosmic Series” collection opened a new Gravers Lane Gallery on Walnut Street in May.
Inquirer art critic Victoria Donohoe called Ms. Bobrowicz’s work “compelling in its illusionism” in 1984 and noted in a review of a 2002 exhibit that “even the slightest air current will set off a diffused stir of motion, meant to suggest the constant motion, change and growth in the universe. ... Such a sculptural piece finds its place as a true work of art.”
» READ MORE: Ms. Bobrowicz discusses how life and art came together for her
Ms. Bobrowicz lectured and taught textiles and weaving at Drexel from 1966 to 1997 and directed countless workshops at craft schools in the United States and Canada. A founding member of the Philadelphia Council of Professional Craftsmen, she won a $50,000 grant from Pew Fellowships in the Arts in 1996 and a $20,000 grant from the Leeway Foundation in 1997.
A former student at Drexel praised Ms. Bobrowicz’s “attention to detail” and “her joy in the process of creating,” and writer and curator Matthew Drutt said in an online tribute: “She was critical to the transformation of the perception of crafts as utilitarian objects preoccupied with process and technique, producing sophisticated objects that embodied parallel concerns occurring in design, architecture, and the fine arts.”
Some of her most well-known pieces are called Randomness and Order, Energy Field, and Nebula Floorscape. Her husband, Joseph, said: “Her work was very cosmic. We felt we came from stardust.”
Born Feb. 17, 1928, to creative and artistic parents in Maplewood, N.J., Yvonne Pacanovsky grew up in Newark, N.J., and studied “the thread” under Marianne Strengell at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., from 1946 to 1949. She met painter and designer Joseph Bobrowicz at Cranbrook, and they married in 1952, and had son Mark and daughters Shelley and Kira. Kira died earlier.
She opened her first weaving studio in Pottstown in 1950, moved to Philadelphia after her marriage, and made wall hangings, tapestries, and rugs before, as she put it, being “provoked creatively.” Her son said: “She was a technical weaver who became an artist. She went from functional to expressive.”
Ms. Bobrowicz was generally optimistic and interested in nature, the women’s movement, politics, and the stock market. She liked to read, travel, and spend time in Ocean City.
“She was a wonderful, kind, loving person who gave of herself,” said daughter Shelley. “She was very involved in her children’s lives.”
In 2002, Ms. Bobrowicz told The Inquirer: “It’s been an interesting journey. Threads have been good with me.”
In addition to her husband and children, Ms. Bobrowicz is survived by three grandchildren and other relatives. Two sisters died earlier.
A celebration of her life is to be held later.