There, she saw Meret Oppenheim's Object (1936), the fur-lined cup and saucer, and was struck by her strong psychological response to this work.
During the Holocaust, Feldman lost numerous family members who remained in Poland, an experience that helped shape her worldview.
[3][5] In 1971 she and her family moved to Uganda, East Africa on a grant from the E. L. Cabot Trust Fund at Harvard University.
Her successful fight to retain her position prompted her to later become an advocate for other women faculty, who she helped to achieve equity and job security.
Feldman was incensed by the tone of admiration she heard in President George Bush's voice when he referred to the Patriot missile.
The series is in the tradition of contemporary women artists' critique of war that entwines images of male sexuality and military aggression.
War Toys Redux (2003) evoked a different kind of mutation: the metal sculptures represented a hybrid between organic and machine forms.
The sensuality of soft, bulbous glass forms reinforced the vision of earlier War Toys, effeminizing the objects of aggression and rendering them impotent.
The first series of mostly hanging sculptures Flasks of Fiction (1998–2001) were originally inspired by the lanterns in mosques Feldman visited while in Turkey.
Combining metal and glass, organic forms and machine parts, aggression and vulnerability, such works as Dyad (2003) and Jacob's Ladder (2011) refer to Martin Puryear in scale and to Louise Bourgeois in psychic intensity.