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Weaving is a sanctuary and a canvas for this L.A. fiber artist with ADHD

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Weaving is a sanctuary and a canvas for this L.A. fiber artist with ADHD

In Fiona Simpson’s Sherman Oaks bedroom, a warm and art-filled space teeming with baskets of yarn and colorful weavings, a Leclerc floor loom from the 1980s occupies nearly as much area as her queen-size bed.

On a recent Saturday in January, with binaural beats playing softly in the background, Simpson threaded her loom using a boat shuttle and shared how the repetitive art form has changed her life.

“Weaving is the one thing, other than sitting down and meditating, that turns my thoughts off,” said the 28-year-old fiber artist, who was awakened at 4 a.m. on Jan. 10 by a false evacuation warning for the Palisades fire. “When I am weaving, I am present. Sometimes there is stillness and quiet; other times it is a way for me to process things. I don’t worry about other things. It’s like a form of therapy, a healing process.”

Fiona Simpson weaving on her Leclerc floor loom

“It’s like a form of therapy,” said Simpson as she weaves on the Leclerc floor loom in her Sherman Oaks bedroom.

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In the face of unprecedented fires and winds in Los Angeles, the mental health benefits of Simpson’s weaving process, which she describes as “the cornerstone” of her well-being, became even more pronounced. “Sometimes there is stillness and quiet, but other times, it is a way to process things — diving into what is happening. And so it was last night as I was packing to evacuate. My heart goes out to all the artists whose life’s work has gone up in flames. I hope they will continue to create art.”

Apart from the joy that comes from working with her hands, Simpson said there is power in repetitive tasks. “I compare it to meditation: inhale, exhale,” she said as she pulled the horizontal beater bar toward her to push the yarn into place. “Everything is threaded one strand at a time. It reminds me of, in simple terms, putting one foot in front of the other.”

It’s not a surprising response from someone who describes herself as neurodivergent, having only recently been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which often includes difficulty paying attention.

In this series, we highlight independent makers and artists, from glassblowers to fiber artists, who are creating and producing original products in Los Angeles.

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“I felt scattered, restless in my thoughts,” Simpson said. “It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do.”

For as long as she can remember, Simpson has been a creative person like her family members. Both of her great-grandmothers were painters; her father, Brian Simpson, is a smooth jazz pianist; and her mother, Beverley Simpson, is a collage artist. “I grew up wearing knit sweaters by my grandmothers,” Simpson said with a smile.

But like so many neurodivergent learners, she struggled to manage her time and attention.

Detail of a weaving in progress
Spools of wool thread
Fiona Simpson sits at her floor loom
Close-up of a purple and blue weaving.

A selection of Simpson’s woven pieces at her home in Sherman Oaks.

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“It was tough knowing I wanted to pursue art but not what direction to go,” she said. “I was a C student and coasted for as long as I can remember. When I was 18, I was told by a doctor that I had anxiety and depression. But that diagnosis never felt right.” (A 2023 study by Epic Research found that more women are being diagnosed with ADHD as adults because, as girls, they often mask symptoms and present differently than boys do.)

In 2007, Simpson started weaving “for fun” when her 70-year-old neighbor, fiber artist Mary Beth Schwartzenberger, offered her a floor loom.

“It wasn’t until I took a sculpting class that I realized how much I love working with my hands,” said Simpson. “That was the turning point. I tried ceramics; I tried so many different things. It wasn’t until the loom that I realized, ‘This is me. This is what I need to be doing.’”

A vignette of sentimental dried flowers and weavings on a wall.

Sentimental mementos on the wall of Simpson’s bedroom.

As a former production weaver who churned out a line of unisex sweaters she sold through the American Craft Council, Schwartzenberger understands the meditative qualities of weaving. “Fiona wasn’t resonating with people her age because she was drawn to fiber, nature and paper arts and not technology,” Schwartzenberger said. “When I started weaving in the 1970s, fiber arts were exploding. There used to be weaving shops throughout Los Angeles, but now those shops are all gone. It’s such a loss. To meet a young person who is even interested in weaving? I thought, ‘Oh, my God, it won’t die.’ It was my privilege to pass it along.”

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With help from Schwartzenberger and the internet, Simpson was off and running.

“I ended up not teaching her much because she fell in love with the weaving process,” Schwartzenberger said with a laugh.

Fiona Simpson and her cat, Milo, exchange a nose kiss in her bedroom studio.

Fiona Simpson and her cat, Milo, exchange a nose kiss in her bedroom studio.

Holding her first weaving, a table runner, Simpson recalled the first time she sat down at the loom. “It was a powerful moment,” she said. “I had goose bumps and thought, ‘This is what I love.’”

Simpson stopping weaving for a few years although she had connected strongly with the art. “It was part of that classic struggle in being neurodiverse — the insecurity of ‘Am I dumb?’ ‘Why can’t I sit down and do this?’ ‘What’s wrong with me?’” she said.

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Looking back, Simpson said her ADHD diagnosis, coupled with weaving, has been life-changing. “It felt like putting on a pair of glasses,” she said of getting individual therapy and having a strong support group. “Since then, feeling like I’m standing on the ground has been incredible. It’s not just getting by. I’m able to fully be myself now.”

An in-progress woven piece on a frame.

One of Simpson’s works in progress rests on a table in her bedroom.

On a warm afternoon back in October, Simpson offered a tour of her work on display at M Street Coffee in Sherman Oaks. On the walls, weavings in saturated colors and textures were interspersed with mixed-media pieces incorporating intricate embroidery, photographs and dried flowers. Creating a color palette, Simpson said, is a big part of her process. “It starts with color. It comes from a natural inclination and inspiration, and much of it is spontaneous.”

On a lace vintage doily, Simpson embroidered the Japanese proverb “Fall seven times, stand up eight,” a fitting metaphor for her metamorphosis as an artist. Asked what she hoped viewers would take away from her work, Simpson said, “Stop, look, pause and enjoy the moment.”

As a mentor figure, Schwartzenberg is moved that her simple gift of a floor loom would have such a profound influence on Simpson, whom she has known since birth. “It was my good fortune to know I touched someone,” she said. “Once you have access to the work of the hand, that never leaves you. My only request of Fiona was that if she decided to keep the loom, she please pay it forward.”

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An in-process multi-fabric project in white.

A weaving composed of lace and wool on the standing loom that Simpson built with her father.

For now, the loom is staying with Simpson. Before she returns to her junior year at Cal State Long Beach following winter break, Simpson has been working on several weavings that will be available for sale on her website. (Her woven pieces range from approximately $350 to $1,400.) She is beginning a table runner on the Leclerc floor loom, a wall hanging made of different cream-colored textiles on the standing frame she built with her father and a tapestry in earth tones that is emerging on a more petite frame — her latest in a series of weavings inspired by nature.

She said she is unsure what the future holds, but she’s committed to earning her bachelor of fine arts in fiber art and possibly pursuing a master’s degree. “I don’t have a linear plan for the next few years,” she said. “I’m open to opportunities as they arise and where life takes me. The one thing I know for certain is that I’ll never stop creating.”

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In ‘No Other Choice,’ a loyal worker gets the ax — and starts chopping

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In ‘No Other Choice,’ a loyal worker gets the ax — and starts chopping

Lee Byung-hun stars in No Other Choice.

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In an old Kids in the Hall comedy sketch called “Crazy Love,” two bros throatily proclaim their “love of all women” and declare their incredulity that anyone could possibly take issue with it:

Bro 1: It is in our very makeup; we cannot change who we are!

Bro 2: No! To change would mean … (beat) … to make an effort.

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I thought about that particular exchange a lot, watching Park Chan-wook’s latest movie, a niftily nasty piece of work called No Other Choice. The film isn’t about the toxic lecherousness of boy-men, the way that KITH sketch is. But it is very much about men, and that last bit: the annoyed astonishment of learning that you’re expected to change something about yourself that you consider essential, and the extreme lengths you’ll go to avoid doing that hard work.

Many critics have noted No Other Choice‘s satirical, up-the-minute universality, given that it involves a faceless company screwing over a hardworking, loyal employee. As the film opens, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) has been working at a paper factory for 25 years; he’s got the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect family — you see where this is going, right? (If you don’t, even after the end of the first scene, when Man-su calls his family over for a group hug while sighing, “I’ve got it all,” then I envy your blithe disinterest in how movies work. Never change, you beautiful blissful Pollyanna, you.)

He gets canned, and can’t seem to find another job in his beloved paper industry, despite going on a series of dehumanizing interviews. His resourceful wife Miri (Son Ye-jin) proves a hell of a lot more adaptable than he does, making practical changes to the family’s expenses to weather Man-su’s situation. But when foreclosure threatens, he resolves to eliminate the other candidates (Lee Sung-min, Cha Seung-won) for the job he wants at another paper factory — and, while he’s at it, maybe even the jerk (Park Hee-soon) to whom he’d be reporting.

So yes, No Other Choice is a scathing spoof of corporate culture. But the director’s true satirical eye is trained on the interpersonal — specifically the intractability of the male ego.

Again and again, the women in the film (both Son Ye-jin as Miri and the hilarious Yeom Hye-ran, who plays the wife of one of Man-su’s potential victims) entreat their husbands to think about doing something, anything else with their lives. But these men have come to equate their years of service with a pot-committed core identity as men and breadwinners; they cling to their old lives and seek only to claw their way back into them. Man-su, for example, unthinkingly channels the energy that he could devote to personal and professional growth into planning and executing a series of ludicrously sloppy murders.

It’s all satisfyingly pulpy stuff, loaded with showy, cinematic homages to old-school suspense cinematography and editing — cross-fades, reverse-angles and jump cuts that are deliberately and unapologetically Hitchcockian. That deliberateness turns out to be reassuring and crowd-pleasing; if you’re tired of tidy visual austerity, of films that look like TV, the lushness on display here will have you leaning back in your seat thinking, “This right here is cinema, goddammit.”

Narratively, the film is loaded with winking jokes and callbacks that reward repeat viewing. Count the number of times that various characters attempt to dodge personal responsibility by sprinkling the movie’s title into their dialogue. Wonder why one character invokes the peculiar image of a madwoman screaming in the woods and then, only a few scenes later, finds herself chasing someone through the woods, screaming. Marvel at Man-su’s family home, a beautifully ugly blend of traditional French-style architecture with lumpy Brutalist touches like exposed concrete balconies jutting out from every wall.

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There’s a lot that’s charming about No Other Choice, which might seem an odd thing to note about such a blistering anti-capitalist screed. But the director is careful to remind us at all turns where the responsibility truly lies; say what you will about systemic economic pressure, the blood stays resolutely on Man-su’s hands (and face, and shirt, and pants, and shoes). The film repeatedly offers him the ability to opt out of the system, to abandon his resolve that he must return to the life he once knew, exactly as he knew it.

Man-su could do that, but he won’t, because to change would mean to make an effort — and ultimately men would rather embark upon a bloody murder spree than go to therapy.

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Austin airport to nearly double in size over next decade

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Austin airport to nearly double in size over next decade

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport will nearly double in size over the next decade. 

The airport currently has 34 gates. With the expansion projects, it will increase by another 32 gates. 

What they’re saying:

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Southwest, Delta, United, American, Alaska, FedEx, and UPS have signed 10-year use-and lease agreements, which outline how they operate at the airport, including with the expansion. 

“This provides the financial foundation that will support our day-to-day operations and help us fund the expansion program that will reshape how millions of travelers experience AUS for decades to come,” Ghizlane Badawi, CEO of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, said.

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Concourse B, which is in the design phase, will have 26 gates, estimated to open in the 2030s. Southwest Airlines will be the main tenant with 18 gates, United Airlines will have five gates, and three gates will be for common use. There will be a tunnel that connects to Concourse B.

“If you give us the gates, we will bring the planes,” Adam Decaire, senior VP of Network Planning & Network Operations Control at Southwest Airlines said.

“As part of growing the airport, you see that it’s not just us that’s bragging about the success we’re having. It’s the airlines that want to use this airport, and they see advantage in their business model of being part of this airport, and that’s why they’re growing the number of gates they’re using,” Mayor Kirk Watson said.

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Dig deeper:

The airport will also redevelop the existing Barbara Jordan Terminal, including the ticket counters, security checkpoints, and baggage claim. Concourse A will be home to Delta Air Lines with 15 gates. American Airlines will have nine gates, and Alaska Airlines will have one gate. There will be eight common-use gates.

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“Delta is making a long-term investment in Austin-Bergstrom that will transform travel for years to come,” Holden Shannon, senior VP for Corporate Real Estate at Delta Air Lines said.

The airport will also build Concourse M — six additional gates to increase capacity as early as 2027. There will be a shuttle between that and the Barbara Jordan Terminal. Concourse M will help with capacity during phases of construction. 

There will also be a new Arrivals and Departures Hall, with more concessions and amenities. They’re also working to bring rideshare pickup closer to the terminal.

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City officials say these projects will bring more jobs. 

The expansion is estimated to cost $5 billion — none of which comes from taxpayer dollars. This comes from airport revenue, possible proceeds, and FAA grants.

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“We’re seeing airlines really step up to ensure they are sharing in the infrastructure costs at no cost to Austin taxpayers, and so we’re very excited about that as well,” Council Member Vanessa Fuentes (District 2) said.

The Source: Information from interviews conducted by FOX 7 Austin’s Angela Shen

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After years of avoiding the ER, Noah Wyle feels ‘right at home’ in ‘The Pitt’

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After years of avoiding the ER, Noah Wyle feels ‘right at home’ in ‘The Pitt’

Wyle, who spent 11 seasons on ER, returns to the hospital in The Pitt. Now in Season 2, the HBO series has earned praise for its depiction of the medical field. Originally broadcast April 21, 2025.

Hear The Original Interview

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