Michela Martello was about four when she announced that she wanted to go to New York. Born in Grosseto and raised in Milan, she had no explanation for this early certainty. Perhaps she had seen the city on television. Even now, she describes the attraction as “a very strong, magnetic call.”

The instinct proved right. She first visited in 1986 as an illustration student and made New York her home in 1998. Through exhibitions and commissions, Martello has built an artistic life in the city she imagined as a child. Most recently, she completed a mural at JFK’s JetBlue terminal, soon to be unveiled, commissioned by the architecture firm Rockwell Group and the hospitality company OTG. Her solo exhibition, May All Beings Know We Are Dreaming, is currently on view at Soka University of America’s Founders Gallery in California (through January 20). Back in New York, a 2026 Brooklyn Arts Council grant is supporting Spirits of Brooklyn, a project featuring her dove installation created from collaborative drawings using the ‘exquisite corpse’ method.

An important part of her New York experience has been Pen + Brush, a nonprofit that champions women and gender-expansive artists and writers. By supporting her work and giving her a solo show, the organization helped her assert herself as an artist.

Jetblu terminal mural commissioned by Rockwell group architects

It is in her Italian roots that Martello finds one of her strongest influences: Giotto, whose compositions, colors, and spiritual mystery continue to inspire her. ‘If I have a moment of blankness, I just open a book of Giotto, and something comes to me,’ she says.” These Italian influences, including the work of Piero della Francesca and Giovanni Bellini, meet Tibetan Buddhist imagery in a practice that brings painting, drawing, and embroidery to vintage textiles and handmade papers.

Martello collects fabrics during her travels, but a discarded scrap of paper can be equally compelling. Back in the studio, she spreads her finds across the floor, moving them around until relationships begin to emerge. An old kimono might meet a dress inherited from her mother. Each carries traces of another life. Martello allows those histories to guide the work, keeping the initial process intuitive before settling into the more deliberate tasks of stitching and assembling.

Some of her most charged materials are military fabrics once used for tents or sandbags. Drawn particularly to damaged pieces, she began painting them with figures and symbols connected to her Tibetan Buddhist practice. Mantras and images associated with compassion became a way to give cloth marked by war a different future.

Thread carries a more intimate inheritance. Her grandmother crocheted, and her mother knitted, bringing beauty and care into family life with little recognition beyond the household. “They never had an exhibition,” she observes. Stitching reconnects Martello to their domestic gestures and offers a quieter space to create without worrying about how her work will be received.

This understanding of feminine creativity finds another expression in her spiritual imagery. Martello is drawn to the dakini, a female manifestation of wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism that, she explains, transcends gender and can transform difficulties into blessings.

Ultimately, making art begins with her own need to understand herself. ‘It’s a way to create harmony in myself,’ she says. Viewers, she adds, often describe a sense of peace and connection.