I was born and raised in Cordoba, Argentina, in a rural landscape where I had the liberty to nurture a free spirit. I was a free-running kid surrounded by dirt roads, large tree roots feeding from a little brook right across my house.

Looking back, I think it was a privilege to grow up so very close to nature, biking on my mother’s English bicycle, catching butterflies, or climbing fruit trees to gather flowers for my mother’s birthdays. It was a free-spirited childhood, a feeling of freedom I retain to this very day despite my rusty joints. Over time, whether the changes were of weather, landscape, culture, or language, all have contributed to giving form and substance to who I became.

Am I surprised to now live and have my studio in a converted mill building in downtown Pawtucket?

Fifty years ago, my husband, Ruben Fijman, and I came for him to do a residency at Rhode Island Hospital in the pathology department, invited by his uncle Jose Fijman who was working as an MD in Newport Hospital. While he was a resident, I became a full-time mom and wife. We raised our two sons first in Edgewood, and then on the East Side so they could have a Jewish education. In the year 2000, Ruben unexpectedly became sick and died, which changed the course of all our lives.

My strong inner drive has always been in the visual arts, principally photography, my first love. During Ruben’s tenure, I was allowed to work as a volunteer developing pictures from the electron microscope at the RI Hospital. While I polished my English skills, I transferred credits from the Cordoba University art school and entered the Art Department at RIC. I established a dark room in the basement of our first home on Betsy Williams Drive, where we lived until 1984. The year Ruben died, somebody said to me, “Liliana, there is a class at RISD’s continuing ed in making paper from plants.” It was love at first sight, and perfectly sensible as I have been a gardener most of my life. The transformation of dead plants into images was a most powerful, albeit paradoxical, symbol of what I was living through. Well, I never stopped from that day on. I started my studio and have embraced the medium of PULP ever since.

It's hard to believe 25 years have gone by since Ruben left us. In the interstices of time, and as I continue my search for meaning, I keep in memory what is most valuable to me: my heritage, my fibers, and my soul. Nowadays, you’ll find me working with plants, making pulp, pounding copper, carving wood, constructing, and designing. I am a doer with strong compositional skills

I have worked mainly with two plant fibers: Kozo from the Broussonetia Papyrifera or mulberry tree, and cotton. Each of these fibers has distinct qualities and produces a unique result that allows me to tell diverse visual stories.

Curiosity and experimentation are the drivers of my creative work. My fountain of inspiration arises from both my emotional state and my interest in the material, subject, and substance. Introspection comes naturally, always looking inward, questioning motivations, searching for understanding, and perhaps self-affirmation.

What do I wish to convey? Is it beauty? Is it the representation of a concept, or the expression of an emotional state? Whether it is a feeling or a concept, I find that natural fibers like cotton and kozo offer me immense possibilities of expression. In the process of handling these fibers, I find new images and ideas; it is a potent, almost magical experience. My most fascinating challenge is to say the most with the least, seeking to represent the intangible with a tangible image.

KOZO: After boiling it, cleaning it, and pounding it into a pulp, one can make paper. It is extremely strong and wonderful to work with. It is used by curators in the restoration of paintings at museums around the world. The traditional Japanese room-dividing screens are made from kozo. The pulp can also be transformed into 2D or 3D artwork.

A variety of plants — flax, hosta, banana, iris, or a combination — can be processed into a slurry, becoming a most generous and versatile medium. They lend themselves to the imagination and experimentation with multiple techniques: sculpting, printing, embossing, cutting, shredding, or printing. It is about transformation from one state to another, using their unique qualities to express my thoughts and feelings.

The dress is my signature; you see it in much of my work. Yes, there is a story - my personal story, of course. I am sure you have your own. Mine has its ups and downs, with happiness and sadness, with feelings and thoughts. If they resonate with you, we are sharing in the experience of my art as a creative and expressive language. I AM ALIVE, I AM A WOMAN, I AM CONSTANTLY RE-CREATING.

The artwork below, A Woman From the Heart, was made for an exhibition at Gallery Z. The gallery owner, Berge Zobian, worked with the American Heart Association, which was promoting women’s heart health. So, what I did was to produce seven dresses in primary red by attaching kozo to aluminum wire. Left to right, they represent health to sickness. It won the first prize of the exhibition — I had to pinch myself. It was purchased by Milford Hospital and is now shown at the entrance to the coronary unit.

“Healing Ribbons” was commissioned by a woman survivor of breast cancer. Our meeting was pure happenstance, as is much of life. The design was taken from a cultural symbol that speaks for the content of the work. Today, it serves a utilitarian purpose, mounted on a window of her home/business. It is illuminated by natural light, much in the style of stained glass, except that it is made of pigmented handmade mulberry fibers on a metal grid.

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The Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, is sited in an old district of shoe manufacturers. The museum sent out a call for artists to submit work on the theme The Perfect Fit, shoes that tell stories. At the time, I was in Argentina with my mother, and wondering, “What the heck am I going to make?” I realized that my mother’s feet were the perfect subject, from youth to old age. She was 97 at the time. As I took the mold of her foot, she looked up at me and said, “I am of good use now.”

What material to use? I tried paper, but clay was the answer. I relished every minute of the process, taking classes in Buenos Aires and Providence. I even flew back to the USA with a wet clay shoe in a box, and then continued to search for the best results. I made eleven shoes, testing different clays.

The museum chose one shoe, which was accompanied by my poem, The Perfect Fit. At the exhibit’s opening, there were four hundred people from all over the world.

My mother lived to be one hundred years and two months.

The perfect fit...
The perfect fit for carving tools; metallic points and curved spoons
were the perfect tools
for my mother’s toes — pure skin —
Neither plaster nor clay
— a paste —
neither clay nor plasticine
flakes and calluses that speak of life
The Passing of time, the shedding of cells

I cast her toes of 97
From cells to pulp, to clay, my mother’s feet will carry on in time

The perfect fit for the perfect matter
turned out to my mother’s toes.

Books are another form of expression, both literary and visual. This art book, made with kozo and Plexiglass, was exhibited in Buenos Aires and was awarded a “special mention.” It represents the birth of a woman.

The book below was made entirely with cotton fiber. I thrive by finding solutions when I’m confronted with challenges.

Copper wrapped around the metal Magen David, or Estrella de David, helped me work on issues of identity. I have been taking philosophy classes for decades with a master philosopher, Diana Sperling, from Buenos Aires. It has been invaluable: heritage, fibers, and soul at work.

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"A Breath on the Line" was made for the World Textile Art International Biennial, 2011, in Mexico. The challenge was an ecological premise open for interpretation: how to make tangible the intangible. I took four months to crystallize a concept into an image. My response: The whiteness and delicate values of the material, the wild circular movement of wire, and the burning of the smoking velum speak to me about the issues we confront as individuals and as a society: pollution and the respect or abuse of an ecosystem that is truly on the line. In the shadows of its materiality lie many questions: What is real? What is essential? What sustains us all? Both the question and answer can be expressed in a single breath.

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In 2024, I created a program at nine Community Libraries in Providence for the students who visit the library after school. The theme was about AIR. The students were to blow colored bubbles onto paper. It was something new for most of them. I loved watching them work. It was lots of fun for both kids and adults, a very rewarding activity for them and for me.

At the conclusion, I made accordion booklets for each library. The project continued as a workship/exhibit, “AIR, a breath on the line,” at Sprout CoWorking during Providence Gallery Night, 2024.

Currently, I am in a Cell Phone Photography class at the Lifelong Learning Collaborative. I look forward to learning what the technology has to offer us!

Now, let me tell you about a dream I had many decades ago. I want to organize an exhibition of women’s art during Women’s Month, March 2026: Celebration of Women’s Creativity. Together with other artists, we will celebrate women. There will be music, storytelling, and artwork to enjoy.

“Gratitude” is the most fitting word to express myself: THANK YOU for collaborating with me to bring my work into the intimacy of Village Voices. After 25 years of exhibiting my artwork internationally, I’m delighted to share my life, art, and philosophy with you, my fellow members of the Village Common.

For more about the history and techniques of papermaking, about me and my art, please visit my website: lilianafijman.com.

Village Voices is conceived, recorded, and edited by John Harkey, Providence Village. Jim Fredricksen is the web page designer.

Visit the Village Voices gallery of artists here. Learn about submitting your work by writing to villagevoices123@gmail.com.