Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam is a leading fibre artist in Canada and Japan, using knitting, crochet, and knot making techniques to create her work.
[1] After graduating, MacAdam worked for Boris Kroll Fabrics, an acclaimed textile design company in New York City.
[2] In the early 1970s, MacAdam's work shifted from being simply fibre art, to interactive spaces as well as a leap from muted colours to a rainbow palette.
This timeline corresponds with the birth of her son at the age of 44 and a move in 1988 to her husband Charles’ native Nova Scotia, Canada.
In 1979, MacAdam collaborated with Fumiaki Takano, a landscape architect, to create another large-scale playspace for a new national park in Okinawa.
[4] The research that she undertook on public leisure spaces, mainly focused on Japan, has influenced her perspective on the role of playgrounds and parks in the development of children.
[1] MacAdams's textile playspaces are now installed in various locations worldwide, including projects in Spain, Singapore, Shanghai, New Zealand and Seoul.
The Nonoichi City Culture Center's main hall displays a large curtain created by the artist called “Luminous.” [2] In 2013, MacAdam, along with Charles MacAdam and structural designer Norihide Imagawa, installed another site-specific work titled Harmonic Motion for “Enel Contemporanea 2013” in the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma in Rome, Italy.
In these books she did hundreds of illustrations demonstrating knitting, crochet, and knot making techniques she studied and learned from different cultures around the world.