Dorian Zachai

United States, 1932 – 2015

Biography"1932 Born: Jersey City, New Jersey. 1933 Started drawing and painting. 1949-1950 Graduated High School, Teaneck, New Jersey. Packed my bags and left home to live in the West Village, paint, and attend Cooper Union of Science and Art. Supported myself working in display, met the first man of my life, married him, and flunked out of Cooper Union. 1950-1955 Lived in furnished rooms and had a succession of interesting and strange jobs lasting from one day to three months, each with unemployment-insurance periods used to full advantage in between. Also got disillusioned with my ability to paint and turned seriously to dancing. Scholarship student at the New Dance Group in Manhattan. 1955 Finally stumbled into a job I could stick with and which paid well (sort of mechanical drawing), left my husband, saved money, gradually became convinced that sweaty rehearsal rooms and the artificial landscape of the city was not the life for me. 1957 Quit my job with savings and had a very happy time living a bachelor life in my seventh-floor walk-up penthouse for $18 a month on the Lower East Side. Started to learn traditional tapestry weaving at the Craft Student's League of the Y.M.C.A. 1958 Scholarship to Haystack Mountain School for Arts and Crafts and spent the summer there studying with Jack Lenor Larsen, Azaylia Thorpe and others. Began to know for certain that tapestry was my medium. 1958-1960 Scholarship to The School for American Craftsman in Rochester, N.Y., and taught weaving and drawing at a progressive educational camp in the Berkshires called Shaker Village. 1960-1961 Got disgusted with the school in Rochester and went to California to study with Trude Guermonprez. Did lots of drawing and camping up and down the coast of California. Did first woven forms, serious tapestries. My direction became clear. 1961-1963 Returned to Rochester. I worked in a tiny studio and began to show my work. Frans Wildenhain became a very large influence in my life. 1963 Returned to Shaker Village in the summer and stayed for the winter in a barn with no heating or plumbing. It was difficult, but there was ample living and studio space. I lived beautifully there and accomplished a good deal of work. I learned how I wanted to live. 1964 Moved to Richmond, New Hampshire, where creative work was cut in on by work on the house, garden, and studio. 1967 Large commissions caused me to outgrow my farmhouse-ballroom-studio, and so I acquired another old house which was converted to my present studio." - Dorian Zachai
- Objects: USA exhibition catalog, Museum of Arts and Design, 1970.