Nikki Virbitsky is a contemporary fiber artist whose work lives at the intersection of memory, grief, and tenderness—stitched slowly into found photographs and forgotten faces. Based in Palm Springs, California, she specializes in hand embroidery layered over antique imagery, creating intimate interventions that invite viewers to sit with what’s been lost, what lingers, and what can still be made beautiful.

Guided by intuition and a reverence for the ghostly, Virbitsky’s practice is rooted in the tactile ritual of thread and time. Her materials are often salvaged—faded portraits, discarded prints, and ephemera with unknowable pasts. She treats each with care, piercing them with color and story, allowing her stitches to function as both mending and meaning.

She studied fine arts at Keystone College and illustration at the Hussian School of Art, eventually becoming an art educator herself—teaching children and adults alike for over a decade at Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia. That time in classroom— the thrill of seeing someone discover they could make art—continues to echo in the way she approaches her own work: with patience, presence, and deep respect for the creative process.

A lifelong maker with deep familial ties to craft, she learned embroidery as a child at her grandmother’s side. Over the years, what began as a quiet hobby has become a language of survival—a way of mapping emotion, memory, and quiet defiance onto cloth. Her pieces often echo with unspoken narratives: love that lingers past death, the ache of nostalgia, the electricity of anger restrained by precision.

Virbitsky’s work has been commissioned by musicians, performers, and private collectors, and has appeared in both gallery settings and unconventional spaces. She believes in the power of slowness, in the intimacy of handwork, and in the stories that haunt the corners of discarded photographs. Every piece is a conversation—with the past, with the viewer, with herself.

She is the artist behind tinyairplanes, and the ghost in the machine is always welcome.