Noa Billick (she/her) is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist, designer, and academic. She is a doctoral student in the Communications and Culture Ph.D. program at Toronto Metropolitan University, and holds an MFA from OCAD University and a BFA in Studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Noa explores Jewish communication, ritual, and storytelling through material and craft — investigating how physical forms carry meaning, memory, and connection across time and place. Central to her work is the concept of "handmade midrash": the idea that making is itself a form of commentary, a tactile engagement with tradition that layers personal story — family history, cultural negotiation, the circumstances of the maker — onto collective memory. Working across book arts and ceramics, she creates pieces that bridge tradition and contemporary life, from haggadot to seder plates, examining how Jewish objects and stories preserve culture while opening space for new meaning.
Raised in Montreal, Noa is a devoted fan of the Oxford comma and on a mission to make the perfect bowl for cereal and matzah ball soup. She is lactose intolerant and has a cat named Oatmeal, who is also lactose intolerant.
Studio photos by Jacq Lihou.
Artist Statement
My work explores Jewish communication, ritual, and storytelling through material culture and craft. I create physical objects that engage with both historical tradition and personal experience, treating material as a bridge between past and present. Whether working with ceramics, textiles, paper, or something else, I am drawn to the tactile nature of making—how the physicality of an object carries meaning beyond words.
At the heart of my practice is an interest in how Jewish narratives are preserved, adapted, and embodied. I investigate the interplay between tradition and reinvention, often working with ritual objects to understand their role in shaping communal and individual identity. By making these objects myself, I engage with the labor, care, and improvisation embedded in Jewish creative expression.
My approach is research-driven and hands-on, informed by historical texts, material archives, and contemporary craft methodologies. I see making as a form of scholarship—one that invites dialogue between the artifact and the maker, between historical continuity and contemporary relevance.
Through this work, I aim to illuminate the ways Jewish material culture is both inherited and remade, emphasizing that tradition is not static but an active, evolving process—one that bridges generations through making, memory, and reinterpretation.
Noa is a Jewish artist finding the sacred in the act of making.
