Featured Artist Heidi Zielinski

Fiber artist Heidi Zielinski presents a stunning collection of bold and vibrant designs inspired by nature. Visit her website to see more of her work.

 

 

I have spent years trying to evaluate what I do and how I do it so that I can teach others how to enjoy the creative process that I am passionate about. Making art quilts is something I wholly embrace and find incredibly inspiring. But I don’t really know how I do it. Well, I know how I do it, I just don’t know how I am successful at it.

 

 

How do I achieve a strong, balanced piece of art? How do I combine fabric, thread and beads to make something so detailed and intricate, but not overwhelming and overdone? And how do I decide when to stop adding beads? How much stitching is enough? These are questions I have heard from students and others who are inspired by my work and want to create like I do.

 

 

It’s all intuitive. For me it is an unplanned process where the art develops as I go through the layers of design—fabric, stitch and embellishment. I don’t draw out a pattern or refer to a color wheel. I don’t go out and buy fabrics that coordinate. And I don’t know what it will look like in the end. But I do know I will finish it and it will work.

 

 

I feel like I am one of the lucky ones. Intuition moves me, color and texture inspire me, and I can see fairly clearly where I need to add something or when I need to stop. What a joy it is to be able to work that way.

 

 

So many of my students struggle with the entire process from choosing the materials to work with, to finding the right beads to compliment and complete the work. Those are rarely struggles for me, but simply the joy of the process from start to finish.

 

 

Producing something beautiful when you spent most of your life not even knowing you had an artistic bone in your body is rewarding, fulfilling, affirming. I was almost 40 before I started messing around with quilting and quickly found that traditional quilts were not for me. I’m definitely not a perfectionist and perfect points and matching seams was just not my thing.

 

 

I love the freedom of creating abstract art using unmeasured, wonky and imperfect shapes, lines and patterns. I love how I can combine unexpected colors and textures to create something that is pleasing to the eye—even without knowing why.

 

 

Analyzing art was only something I did when I had to be able to explain it in a magazine article or to a student in a class. I could have blissfully continued to create without ever knowing that those are complimentary colors, that’s negative space, and that using elements in three’s helps to create balance.

 

 

But now I do know and I share that because everyone should know the joy of making art and finding happiness in what they create.

 

Heidi Zielinski invites you to follow on Facebook and Instagram.

 

 

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