I was born in Haifa, Israel and grew up in a home surrounded by my uncle’s paintings.

My uncle, Adolf Milich, was a contributing member of the School of Paris painters in the

1920s; all of his work survived WWII, with a sizeable collection finding a place in our Tel

Aviv home. It was my uncle’s elegant, freeform technique that I later emulated in my

early career as a painter. The gentle strokes of my uncle’s brush somehow helped

soften the heavy cloud of trauma that weighed on the shoulders of my Holocaust

survivor parents, and by-proxy, me and my brother. This post-traumatic atmosphere not

only impacted my artistic development, it was also the driving force behind my decision

to move to the United States with my two small children in 1981.

I struggled with the hardships of being an immigrant mother in America during a period

of hyperinflation and unemployment. Nevertheless, I worked hard to cultivate my

artistic career, having my first exhibition at the East Brunswick Museum in central New

Jersey shortly after our arrival. While trying to sell my work across venues in the Tri-

State area, I started to pursue another passion of mine – textiles and fashion. I

established my own high-fashion knitwear company labeled “Aya Bendat” and opened a

small showroom on 7 th Avenue in New York.