Spotlight: Marian Zielinski, Fiber and Surface Design Artist

Marian Zielinski found her passion for fiber arts and surface design as a set and costume designer. She found herself exploring a variety of techniques to bring the sets and costumes to life. Continuing to explore new techniques, she now creates unique fiber art pieces with bold colors and that play with value.

How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?

I learned to trust my intuition early and I simply followed the path to which I was drawn. I loved art and literature, so when I was offered a graduate assistantship in costuming, I followed that path. But I was even more drawn to set and lighting design and in my third year of graduate school, I was able to transfer my assistantship to the scene shop. I loved creating and drafting an environment for a script, researching period style, painting, engineering construction, and coloring with light. I discovered fiber was cropping up in a number of my sets and eventually I began creating art quilts for exhibition. It was definitely an evolving process.

How has your experience in theater costume design influenced your art?

Interestingly, it was my work in scene design more so than costuming that significantly influenced my art. I discovered fiber and fabric was an amazing complement to wood, metal, and plastics. I found myself weaving bushes, knitting and crocheting trees, creating walls from yarn and baling twine, and even quilting backdrops. Fiber and fiber art techniques made my sets unique, as it is not typically a subject that scene designers study in-depth.

When was the first time that you remember realizing that you are a creative person? 

I always thought everyone valued creativity and the intrinsic reward that accompanied engaging an idea or subject from as many angles as possible. So, I was really surprised to discover that wasn’t true. As I look back on my grammar school experience, I remember how discipline was far more highly valued than creativity. But for some reason, the nuns allowed me (and only me) to take a few liberties with the art projects we were assigned. That was my first clue that creativity was one of my gifts.

Where do you find inspiration and ideas for your art?

I find inspiration anywhere and everywhere! Most often when a seed for an idea is planted, it is nurtured by philosophical dialogues with my husband, things I read, happenstance, dreams I’ve had, research I’ve done, places I go, people I meet, etc. When the idea begins to reverberate in all aspects of my life—both past and present, it takes root and compels me to make it manifest in my work.

Are there recurring themes in your work? What is it about a subject that inspires you to continue exploring it?

My work deals with human nature, how we perceive ourselves, others, and the world, how we experience time and space, music, and the nature, metaphor, and visual impact of light. I also find myself returning to precarity, explorations of nature, elemental matter and energies, and world mythology.

What keeps drawing me back to a certain subject entails its complexity, nuance, how it is colored by other things I am still discovering, and how it applies to the present.

What processes and techniques do you use in your art?

I incorporate dyeing, painting, printmaking, drawing, mixed-media, photography, and digital design and composition into my artwork. In some, I use exclusively analogue techniques; in some, exclusively digital; and in some, I combine both. I also integrate other fiber art media, like felting, knitting, crochet, embroidery, applique, and piecing. Thus far, all my work has included free-motion quilting.

When it comes to creating, are you more of a planner or an improviser?

I do both planning and improvisation and I enjoy both processes. I like to borrow Nietzsche’s pairing of Apollo and Dionysius and think of my creative process as a dance (or at times a battle) between the forces of discipline and freedom, order and chaos, and thought and passion.

Are you a “finisher”? How many UFOs do you think you have?

I typically finish my pieces, though I do have an unfinished diptych on my painting wall that has been there for quite time! Even so, I wouldn’t experience any guilt if I decided to abandon a piece, as I always learn something in the process.

Describe your creative space.

My pool-side art studio is a free-standing building, designed for my needs (at the time) by my friend, who was a landscape architect. It houses a bathroom (with a shower), laundry sinks, and 600 square feet of open space that I’ve partitioned with drawing and work-tables, shelves, etc. I use it for drawing, painting, dyeing, and printmaking. I can also easily work outdoors during good weather, especially when using solar techniques.

My fiber studio is our bonus room and is large enough to accommodate a 3’ x 6’ cutting table I built, a large ironing station, my mid-arm quilting machine as well as a sewing machine, felting machine, and serger. The walls are packed full with storage units filled with supplies and I’ve recently added a 6’ x 6’ design wall. (Previously, I had been using the hall outside the studio as my primary design wall.) My computer equipment is housed at a desk, which keeps claiming more and more of our dining room!  

Do you use a sketchbook or journal? How does that help your work develop?

I do keep a sketchbook and often write about both the underlying idea and possible ways to engineer, build, and interpret sketches in different ways.  It is essentially a place to collect and begin to develop more of the possibilities I have in mind. I’ve also discovered that having this record of impressions, concepts, and images helps me to better understand myself as an artist—what thoughts I keep revisiting, which motifs reoccur, the methods and materials to which I am drawn, and how I am evolving over time as an artist.

How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?

I’m really struggling to come up with an answer to that first question! On one level, I have no conscious awareness of timeline. Often, it’s simply a matter of how long it takes to finish the current project and set-up the studio for the next. On another level, there’s always a seed germinating, experimentation being done—drawing, research, playing with potential techniques for the next project, photo trips, etc. So when does a new project actually begin? 

I used to develop only one idea at a time, but now that I have three separate spaces for wet, dry, and digital media, I may have multiple pieces in process in each, particularly now that I’m adding more design walls. When I’m designing on my computer, I typically finish the digital work on a particular piece before beginning the next, but lately I’ve been putting some of those on the back burner so that I can see them later with fresh eyes.

Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does a new work come about?

The main motif for my work, “Mutual Life of the Universe” is a gecko–a small lizard I had never seen prior to moving south. In fact, for my first 8 years living in Georgia, I still had never seen one. Now, in the summer, I see them almost every day. In my first encounter, I was little afraid, as I knew nothing about them. Now, I can pick up and carry them to a location safe from predators. As I was learning about geckos, I photographed them and watched them change colors as they changed locations. I was fascinated. And it occurred to me that this story had a lesson for dealing with any “other” who is unlike “me”. My artwork is about perception, adaptation, and transformation in oneself, how we adapt to our environment, how we can learn to live in harmony with one another, as we all made of the same clay.

This work is one of my earliest pieces incorporating digital media. Here I’ve used my photographs, scenograms, and digitized textures from sun-painted fabrics re-composed digitally using Adobe Photoshop. I out-sourced the image for whole cloth printing. Then I overlaid applique cut-outs in printed felt, tulles, nets and sheers, free-motion quilted the piece, and then embellished with shells, feathers, beads, and couched yarns.

Ultimately, then, a new work arises from my experiences of being in the world. It was actually many years between the first sighting of a gecko, my photographic collection, and the need to express these ideas in the making of this quilt.

Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?

I really like all of it. I love any aspect of the actual engagement in making–from first mark on the sketchbook/computer/fabric to seeing the final finished piece. Even photographing it and coming up with the title! My favorite part is in the middle of it all when I can’t wait to get back to the studio. The hardest part is making the first mark. Initially it seems so important but ultimately becomes so inconsequential. I think what makes it hard is closing the first door on the possibilities of what else it could be if…. But that’s another piece, isn’t it?

How is your work different than it was in the beginning? How is it the same?

Initially, I explored every known fiber and surface design technique (and created a few of my own) for use in my work and as research in developing the curriculum for my fiber art class at the university where I taught. As I learned applicable digital design software programs, I began to design my own fabric for my art and incorporate my photography. What I think remains similar in my work throughout my career is the use of dramatic, bold color and the influence of light and shadow to create texture and form.

What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work? 

Navigating obstacles, avoiding habituation, beginning the actual doing/mark making/stitching, and finding new experiences to inspire new work is how I keep motivated and interested in my work.

I’ve struggled a bit with motivation this past year, as I’ve had surgeries on both of my thumbs that removed bones in my basal joints and transplanted tendons in my forearms for reconstruction of those joints. I’ve spent time trying to recover my range of movement in my hands (and fighting off the looming depression—one of those obstacles I’ve mentioned). But I’ve been exhibiting my work, finishing what I could, re-thinking and re-writing my artist statement, and contemplating what new direction my work will take. This week, I’m spring cleaning my studio spaces and preparing for a launch that takes me back into my roots in surface design and integrates my digital work in an even more interactive way. I’m very excited about it!

Do you critique your own work? What is your process? 

I strive to be my own best critic. Becoming a critic of your own work is essential but it can be a very difficult thing to learn to do. Ultimately it is about knowing yourself, what you like, and why you like it. After all, that is what makes your work unique.

My process is this: After playing freely and with abandon, I begin to dance with yes and no. I choose my first “yes”, and then a second in relationship to it, etc. At any point any one of those “yeses” can become a “no” as relationships between forms, colors, and values build in complexity.

What traits, if any, do you think that creative people have as compared to people who are not creative? 

I am going to posit that the most important trait for creative people is the willingness to sustain inquiry and become comfortable in their embrace of ambiguity. Creative people are looking for something new—ideas, perspectives, juxtapositions, so they must have a willingness to try unexpected (maybe sometimes scary) things, have tremendous patience and a capacity for deep concentration. They are curious, possess a wonderful blend of logic and passion and have a broad knowledge-base. They choose to engage fully in the embodied act of being, are perceptive and nuanced in articulating their discoveries.

Folks who choose not to embrace their creative capabilities may have many of these qualities but seem to prefer to exert control more quickly rather than allowing the flow of experimenting with multiple options that take them into the unknown.

Where can people see your work?

www.marianzielinski.com
https://www.saqa.com/art/juried-artists/marian-zielinski

Interview posted March 2024