olivia henry portfolio
united states
Olivia Henry (she/they) is a Glendale, California raised and Brooklyn, New York based multidisciplinary artist employed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (a.k.a, the Met), a goldmine of diverse and sometimes surprising sources of inspiration for her work. About her artistic approach, she offers: “I originally have a theater background, but now I love being a clown! I think we need more Armenian clowns.”
As a creative practitioner of many fiber arts, Olivia combines Armenian needlelace (a.k.a., janyak) trims with crochet, knitting, embroidery, and needlepoint for clothing and other wearables. Their objective as an artist is to create practical and useful items that allow people to sit with pieces of art for longer periods of time. In today’s world in which we are inundated with media and information, Olivia likes making wearables that people very slowly “consume” by using them functionally, a parallel to the art form she describes as “the intricate and lovingly laborious practice of janyak.”
In 2023, at the age of twenty-five Olivia learned to make Armenian needlelace via YouTube, mostly through videos on the channel BecomeInspired by Ashley. Once Olivia learned the basic mountain (a.k.a., Ararat) stitch, they drew inspiration from motifs they would see in familial and contemporary doilies, as well as works in historic collections, e.g., at the Met's Antonio Ratti Textile Center.
Her learning was sparked by vending her fiber arts accessories at a market centering SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) artists and wanting to incorporate something personal to her ancestry. Olivia’s mother's family is from Van, a key ancient Armenian kingdom (in present-day Eastern Turkey), and from Kesab, a town in northwest Syria with a majority Armenian population which originated in the medieval period. With Irish ancestry on her father's side, she asserts that she inherited her knack for fiber arts from both sides of her family. She reflects: “I love how well janyak pairs with other forms of fiber arts, so I was very eager to learn!” She was greatly inspired too by Ali Cat and Emma Welty’s initiative to practice the craft.
Olivia believes that there is something powerful in practicing needlelace purely for leisure in the twenty-first century—a way of practice which may not have been available to Armenian women in previous generations including her great-grandmother, Mari Apelian Injejikian, who had mastered needlelace making. Olivia states: “It is an honor to revive a craft that was so important to my great-grandmother after it had skipped two generations.” Her goal is to one day be as skilled as her foremother. Furthermore, she has cousins who are interested in learning, and she can hardly wait to teach her own generation of her family.
At present, Olivia teaches in-person beginner Janyak classes in Glendale and Brooklyn, in which students learn how to complete the mountain stitch, to create borders on handkerchiefs, and if/when ready, to start a doily. From her experiences as a teacher, Olivia says, “I am always amazed how generational memory allows students to pick up the craft so easily.” Having hosted a knitting circle a few times at Junior High, a non profit LGBTQ+ gallery and art space in Glendale, in the fall of 2025 Olivia became inspired to teach an Armenian needlelace workshop there. Initially, she had the idea that it would be a one-time workshop that perhaps a few people would sign up for. Instead, her teaching practice has now evolved into offering multiple classes on the east and west coasts of the United States, generating nearly two hundred new lacemakers and counting! “My ancestors helped me TOO much,” Olivia quips reverently, affirming that “it's been a blessing to create a space for young, queer, Armenians in Glendale and in Brooklyn to meet each other.”