Stanley Walter Bulbach began his career as a contemporary American fiber artist after studying History of Religion (B.A. 1969, NYU). While completing his graduate work in Ancient Near Eastern Studies (M.A. 1972, NYU and Ph.D. 1981, NYU) he focused on ancient Mesopotamian history, material culture, and cuneiform languages, including Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Ugaritic, as well as Classical Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic.

The ancient wool trade fueled much of that long history with its early sciences and economics. The aesthetics and technologies of the carpet arts played a key role in ancient Near Eastern material culture and arts, ultimately traveling into Europe and then the New World. These ancient technologies were the direct precursors of our modern computer and photochemical sciences, as well as key part of banking.

Throughout history it was upon carpets that most people rested and slept, dreamt, gave birth, and died. For nomads, carpets transformed unfamiliar ground into a familiar temporary and comfortable home. They were portals connecting different states of being, and consciousness and also used for contemplation and prayer. Magical designs, astronomic, terrestrial, as well as chthonic, connected the personal with the communal and the divine.

In contemporary times flatwoven kilims, for example Anatolian and Ukrainian, have been particularly attractive to the West, because the “grain” of their woven structure tends to favor abstractions and patterns. In many ways Bulbach’s contemporary art form expresses New York City’s wealth of different cultures and our connections to the past.

Using original techniques and materials, including handspun lustrous long wools and traditional vegetal dyes, Bulbach creates prayer carpets, carpet beds, and flying carpets, as contemporary tapestries to be enjoyed as art on the wall.

Bulbach’s writings about this field of art have been widely published over the past four decades. His art work has been featured by The Wool Bureau, Inc., the American Craft Museum, the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Oriental Rug Review, the Textile Society of America. Recent articles about him and his work are “Chelsea’s Fiber Artist: “Stanley Bulbach Creates Tapestries Using Old World Techniques” (Chelsea Life, April 2013); “Bulbach Weaves Ancient Craft into Contemporary Art” (Chelsea Now, August 2011); and “2011: The Year in People” (Chelsea Now, December 28, 2011).

Recent solo exhibitions reflecting his fiberart and New York’s ethnic communities are “The Interweave of the Near East and Chelsea,” Hudson Guild Gallery II (NYC 2016) and “Interwoven Over Millennia: East, West, Ancient and New,” Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University (NYC 2019). Bulbach’s kilim art was included in “The Fiber Effect” at the Ukrainian Institute of America (NYC 2022).

Bulbach’s art work, biography, bibliography and many of his writings can all be enjoyed on his artist website: www.bulbach.com.