Renate Maile-Moskowitz’s artistic background, in short, is multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary, versatile, and crosses many boundaries.
She was born, raised, and trained in Germany in just about every textile tradition available at the time, including the nearly extinct techniques of felt making, silk and sericulture production, plant dyeing, lace- and papermaking. These traditions became a research and teaching pursuit of hers at a very young age and when a Fulbright Scholarship in Dance brought her to the USA in 1979 and 1980, many new venues opened for her to apply her experiences and interests in new textile and costume fields. Among them, her long-term artistic employment at the Washington National Opera under general director Placido Domingo.
Renate Maile-Moskowitz has now combined her love of fabrics and textiles with her equal passions for folklore, teaching, research, theater, storytelling, and dance. Schools, theaters, museums, curators, conservators, costume shops, artists, and lay people have called on her assistance to compose their ideas for presentations on stage, in the classroom, or for display. These efforts involve hands-on participation to learn in the process and about the process. Basic fibers, such as silk, cotton, wool, flax, milkweed, leather, and other fibers are manipulated without the need of elaborate tools or supplies into many (not only classroom friendly) fiber projects while investigating the multi-cultural approaches to the form, an exciting exploration germane to many curriculum areas and to endless artistic venues.
MFA, Costume Design, University of Maryland; BFA, Dance, University of Maryland; equivalent of BS, Physical Education with Math and Biology minors, University of Stuttgart, Germany
