sofi khachmanyan portfolio

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Dr. Sofi Khachmanyan (she/her) is an embroidery artist who graduated from the Art-Technical College in Yerevan in 1978. At the age of nineteen, under the tutelage of the well-known embroiderer Margo Hambartsumyan, Sofi began learning the technique of Armenian needlelace in college—which was a part of the basic curriculum along with a variety of embroidery stitches and techniques. After graduation, Sofi continued her creative practice with thread: she polished her lace-making skills and taught embroidery arts to teenagers. In recognition, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Armenia bestowed on her the title of “Master of Embroidery” in 1983.

Sofi’s mother, Hazarnaz Hakopyan, was skilled at knitting, but her aunt, Siranush Hakopyan, made neelelace. Sofi’s mother told her that, as a village girl, her aunt had spun cotton thread used for lacemaking. In college, Sofi was not interested at first in lace-making because she felt it was too complicated and time consuming. But not long after, she became convinced that the time spent in creating a beautiful piece of needlelace was well worth the effort. When she finished her first doily, “Kochari (Circle Dance),” the museum director at the Folk Art Museum of Armenia wanted to acquire it for the museum. That experience solidified her dedication to the ancestral art form.

Sofi continues making lace to this day many decades after she first began. She occasionally teaches and lectures on Armenian needlelace, including workshops in conjunction with the exhibition Janyak: Armenian Art of Knots and Loops at the Fowler Museum, University of California at Los Angeles, curated by Gassia Armenian. Currently Sofi’s workshops are sponsored by the Creative Hands Cultural and Educational Center, a family run art school for children located in the Los Angeles, CA area. She gives lectures and teaches workshops in the scope of the Armenian Dress and Textile Project.

Sofi designs new patterns when making Armenian needlelace and incorporates semiprecious beads such as peridot, pearls, garnets, agates, and more. As the patterns used in laces are highly symbolic, so too the stones she includes are chosen for their symbolic value. Sofi is skilled in many types of threadwork including Marash, Sivaz, Aintap and other embroidery stitches. She has also mastered crocheting, knitting, tapestry making, felting, fashion design, and different techniques of textile design. She has taught fashion design, garment construction, history of fashion, and other classes related to textiles in a variety of institutions of higher education including the Art Institute of Hollywood and Woodbury University. Currently, she teaches sewing, pattern drafting, draping, and design classes at Santa Monica City College in Santa Monica, CA.

Sofi earned her PhD in 2019 at the Institute of Arts, National Academy of Science of the Republic of Armenia. Based on her dissertation topic, she published a book in Armenian in 2024 entitled «Կաթողիկոսի հանդերձանքի պատկերագրությունը հայ միջնադարյան մանրանկարչության մեջ». And in 2026, the book was published in English under the title The Iconography of the Catholicos’ Vestments in Armenian Medieval Miniature Painting and can be purchased on Amazon; the Armenian version can be purchased through Abril Books in Glendale, CA.

Sofi’s paternal and maternal grandparents were originally from Kars, in what is now Eastern Turkey near the border of Armenia. Her father was born there and left the country with his parents when he was three years old. Her mother was born in Georgia, where her parents lived after leaving Kars. Family stories state that her father's family moved more than two-hundred years ago to Kars  from Nakhichevan (Nakhidjevan), where Armenians historically constituted a significant proportion of the population. After leaving Kars, they lived in Russia and in Nagorno Karabakh for two generations, and finally immigrated to Armenia in the 1950s, where they still live. Sofi was born in 1958 in Yerevan and moved to the United States in 1988; she currently lives in the Los Angeles, CA area.

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