Andi LaVine Arnovitz was born in 1959 in Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated with a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis. For many years, Andi worked in advertising as an art director, creating print campaigns and television commercials. She attributes the conceptual ideas behind many of her pieces to this work experience. Andi considers herself a printmaker, a paper-manipulator, a bookmaker and an assemblage artist. Her primary love is working with paper, printing on it, etching with it, drawing, sewing, tearing and repairing. Her pieces often reflect her love of pattern, surface, and thread she has had since she was child wandering through her father’s fabric store in Kansas City. In 1999 Andi and her family moved to Jerusalem, Israel. A two-year sabbatical has become a permanent stay and much of her work is informed by the multitudinous differences of living in the Middle East. Of great concern to her are primary issues surrounding the differences between Jews and Arabs, between religious and non-religious, between Jewish law and contemporary society, between men and women, between young and old. Over and over these politics and tensions are explored, examined and dissected in her works. Andi has had numerous solo shows in Jerusalem, and recently one at Brandeis University, and at Yeshiva University Museum in NYC. Her work has been included in many group shows all over the world: in France, Spain, England, Poland, Canada, Israel, the United States, Lithuania, and Finland.