Hello my name is Ariana Barat.

As a printmaker, I have worked for the Brodsky Center, the Lower East Side Printshop, the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop and the Glasgow Print Studio editioning artwork for bluechip artists such as Kara Walker and Chuck Close. I was Director of the Printmaking Department at Parsons School of Design for 7 years and hold a BA in Fine Arts from Rutgers University and my MS from the New School in International Affairs with a concentration in Development and Economics. My research centers on labor compliance regulations in the garment industry and market demand analysis for handicraft in the artisan sector. I have collaborated with the World Bank and UNHCR researching income generating opportunities for artisan enterprises in emerging economies. In May 2018 I served as a panel expert with the UN Global Compact for the Youth Fashion Summit, which is part of the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, the largest international conference on fashion and sustainability.

As master craftsman, I am an avid supporter of the handmade and believe, "perhaps, as no other industry, craft is deeply involved with the most fundamental development agendas of our time: managing threats to the environment, promoting justice and equity and peace by bringing the deprived into the center of concern, empowering women through recognition of their craft roles and contributions, offering identity and confidence in an era threatened by globalized uniformity, providing sustainable livelihoods to households and communities in their own locations through the use of local resources, protecting them from the miseries of migration and leaving a light carbon footprint to address the threat of climate change. In other words, it is an industry that probably reflects, as no other, both the issues and the opportunities for sustainable development." - “Can Our Future be Handmade?” by Ashoke Chatterjee