Biographical Note
Magdelena Nowacka-Jannotta was born and raised prior to the start of World War II in Warsaw, Poland. As a child, her mother, who used papercut templates in her detailed embroidery work, introduced her to the art of creating her own patterns. After the war broke out, Nowacka-Jannotta and her mother were sent to two German prison camps for displaced Polish citizens, at which point she contracted tuberculosis. After the war, she was sent to the Tatra mountains to live with a sheepherding family and recuperate her health. Several years later, she returned to her family, who had been resettled in Sulejowek due to her father's anti-communist views.
After graduating high school, Nowacka-Jannotta studied sinology at Warsaw University, and also took the opportunity to visit with local wycinanki master artists in the Kurpie and Lowicz regions of Poland. With the encouragement of one of her professors and her father, she applied for and received a scholarship to study linguistics at UCLA. After completing her graduate degree, marriage and her husband's career brought her to Washington, D.C., where she became a part-time interpreter for the State Department. Still creating wycinanki on the side, she was eventually discovered by Ralph Rinzler, the assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who later invited her to teach classes through the Smithsonian Associates program. Nowacka-Jannotta was subsequently employed by the Smithsonian's Folklife Festival and performing arts divisions and later found a position as the program and events coordinator at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
In 1990, Nowacka-Jannotta relocated to Tucson, Arizona, where she continued to create wycinanki and Southwest inspired papercuts. Her artwork has appeared in local and international exhibitions and is included in the permanent collection of the American Center of Polish Culture in Washington, D.C.