Making Cultural Impact
The expulsion of some intellectuals
and artists by the Polish government, 1968, brought Tadeusz Jaworski, a
prize-winning film/TV producer/director, in his homeland, and his wife,
Tamara, a world-renowned tapestry-gobelin artist, to Canada. Arriving
in Canada, 1969, Tad, MFA graduate, 1951, State Academy of Film and Theatre
Arts, Lodz, Poland, has taught at both Humber College and York University,
Toronto, and has worked as a celebrated independent producer/director of
docudramas and various documentaries over the last 30 years. His written
and directed six-hour CBC TV production, The Jesus Trial, starring Christopher
Plummer, Douglas Campbell, and Robin Gammell, was described by “the Pope”
of French critics, Jean Jacques Gauthier, of La Figaro, as a work of “great
research, of great interest and of great intelligence.” His docudrama Selling
Out, 1972, based on social and family changes in Prince Edward Island,
was nominated for an Academy Award, 1973, and won a Golden Etrog (Genie),
Canadian Film Festival, 1972. Tad Jaworski’s accomplishments both as a
film and TVproducer/writer has led to more than 35 major and/or international
awards he has won in Europe, the U.S., Australia, and Canada. Producer
of over 200 feature TV dramas, docudramas, and cinema verité documentaries,
Tad was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, 1978. Tamara, Tad’s
internationally acclaimed wife, has, over the past 40 years, been featured
as a tapestry artist in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide.
Her skill and artistry in tapestry/gobelin weaving, an art form dating
back more than 500 years, is considered part of the great renewal of this
art in Poland and throughout Europe. She is the only North American artist
represented at the Centre National de la Tapisserie d’Aubusson in Paris.
The Louvre’s Francois Mathieu, curator, Decorative Art, describes her work
“at the peak of modern art weaving.” Exhibitions of her tapestry/gobelin
have been widely acclaimed in more than a dozen European countries and
her tapestries hang in such galleries as the Pushkin National Museum, Moscow,
Warsaw’s National Museum, National Museum of Textile Arts, Lodz, and the
Scottish Art Institute. Numerous private collectors and corporations in
Canada have commissioned her to weave major works, two of the largest on
display being the four tapestries, each 9’x15’, titled "Quartet Modern”
at the First Canadian Place, Bank of Montreal Tower, Toronto, and a much
celebrated 22’x33’ tapestry, “Unity,” in the lobby of Place Bell Canada,
Ottawa. Three international competitions have awarded her gold medals,
including one in Milan and another in New York. Los Angeles Times critic
Leon Whiteson has described her as “one of Canada’s proudest cultural trea-sures,
"a fact also recognized by the Governor General, 1994, when Tamara was
made Member, Order of Canada, the citation reading in part, “an artist
and weaver at the forefront of the renaissance of the 16th century of French
gobelin tradition, Tamara Jaworski is renowned for her ability to marry
this medieval craft with contemporary design.” In this view, left, Tamara
works at her loom in her Toronto studio executing the 8’x8’ tapestry-diptych,
"Spheres,” now hanging in the John Molson Executive Reception Hall, Toronto.
Tad Jaworski, above, prepares to direct a scene from The Jesus Trial, a
six-hour documentary, completed, 1978. [Photos, courtesy Tad Jaworski]