Bio:
Lya Finston is an artist, printmaker, and educator based in Chicago, IL. Born in Brooklyn, NY and raised in Cranford, NJ, Lya has since made the midwest her home. In 2018 she received a BA in Studio Art and German Language from Oberlin College, and in 2025, an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa.
Lya is currently teaching Printmaking at Harold Washington College, where she is an Adjunct Lecturer. She also teaches private sessions and group classes in relief and intaglio at Spudnik Press.
Lya has formerly served as an Instructor of Record at the University of Iowa, a Printmaking TA and Shop Technician at Bucknell University, an Access Services Assistant at the Ryerson & Burnham Library of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Statement:
My artistic practice is an investigation of worry, and the ways in which religion and perception construct themselves around it. My reflections on Jewish folk culture legitimize superstition, holding it sacred for the cultural legacy and promises of safety it provides. Here we find less intellectualized, and more inherited frameworks for understanding the world, whose very unprovability lend them validity. These traditions speak volumes to the human experience, illuminating the regional and historical circumstances from which they were born, and mirroring timeless anxieties of humankind. My prints and sculptures exist within a blended domestic-spiritual landscape. By enlisting the inherent authority of the graphic mark, I am able to bolster so-called superstitions, reifying my depictions of them in a visual language that is at once historical and contemporary.
I am a Jewish artist who is interested in investigating, bolstering, and celebrating the diasporic, anti-zionist Jewish culture with which I identify. Traditions that are categorized as "superstition" are of particular interest to me because they so often blend into the landscape of the home, encompassing the experiences of women and other marginalized groups within traditional Jewish practice. My work explores elements of historical Jewry without betraying my commitment to engage with Jewish traditions in the direction of universal emancipation.