Featured Artist Heidi Zielinski

Fiber artist Heidi Zielinski creates colorful nature-inspired works using numerous layers and embellishments. See more by visiting her website.

 

 

My textile art is a reflection of the beauty in my neighborhood. It has a wide reach beyond my yard and into the mountains and forests that surround the beautiful Montana river valley where I reside.

 

 

I was never an artist in my younger years. Although I had artist parents, I never even imagined myself as an artist. It wasn’t until I had the luxury of quitting my full-time job and staying home with a young son that I began to create art using cloth, stitch and embellishment.

 

 

Early in my journey I began experimenting with techniques for making marks and manipulating cloth to incorporate into my work. The various processes include painting, dyeing, rusting, color removal, stamping, stenciling, embroidery, and beading. I also use numerous varieties of shibori fabric manipulation to build a collection of materials that allow me to communicate my love for nature.

 

 

My recent work utilizes hand-dyed fabrics created with a technique that incorporates melting ice and dye powder in a serendipitous process. This gives a depth of color and intricacy of pattern.

 

 

I choose the colors, but how they disperse on the material is completely out of my control—and truly inspiring. A single dye color may actually be made up of multiple colors. When those colors break out as the ice melts, they create unexpected designs.

 

 

Hand-dyed fabrics, and sometimes commercial fabric, are layered in the quilting tradition. I then stitch them with intricate lines, shapes and patterns to create flow and a sculptural effect. Both machine and hand stitching is used in an intertwining and complementary way.

 

 

Choosing the threads and how to use them is integral to the work and is an important part of my design process. I view my work as a three-step process with three essential layers of design to achieve balance. The first layer is the cloth itself and how I combine fabrics, often in a collage style arrangement. The stitching then adds more color, movement and line.

 

 

The final design layer is embellishment. This is mostly beading, which adds dimension, texture and a unique play of shadow and light. The stone, glass, ceramic, wood, metal and other materials that compose the beads is in unique contrast to the way fiber absorbs light, creating a lovely melding of elements.

 

 

I find joy in sharing my personal admiration and respect for what I observe and how I feel about the outdoors and the natural world through the beauty I am able to create in my studio. As I work through the process, I can’t help but appreciate the value of our natural environment.

 

 

I hope that when I share my work, people can see the beauty that I find in these landscapes and how much it adds to our lives. Making art is truly fulfilling, but sharing the work and the sentiment behind it for viewers to appreciate is beyond rewarding.

 

Artist Heidi Zielinski invites you to follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

 

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