Malka Kutnick earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Arts from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan majoring in painting. She won a first place Outstanding Achievement Award for the 1969 Annual Student Show. In 1970 a one-person show showcased her innovative soft sculpture, an outgrowth of her interest in movement, rhythm, color and motion. She was encouraged by her instructor, John Egner, to examine and challenge previous ideas in art, leading her experimentation with sewing cloth to creating soft sculpture. Her fabric works explore an exceptional inventiveness and unique feeling for form. Moving to Boston, she taught art at Chamberlayne Junior College and later directed the Student Art Association at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Winning a Merit Award for three soft sculptures in the “Cotton Comes Home, International Fiber Competition,” Southeastern United States Museum Tour, was pivotal for Kutnick. This led to exhibiting two soft sculptures at the Hadler Galleries in New York City in 1978 and subsequently inclusion in the book The Art Fabric: Mainstream by Mildred Constantine and Jack Larsen. In 1982 she was invited to create a work for the National Plastics-Fibre Exhibition, “New Plastic: Fiber in Today’s Technology” Visual Arts Center of Alaska. Her work was also accepted in the Fiber Sculpture National exhibit at Nazareth College Arts Center in Rochester, NY in 1982.
Based in Kensington, MD, she maintains a studio practice in watercolor and soft sculpture and has expanded her media to acrylics.