Online talk on Monday 11th March 2024
Marian Jazmik - Beyond the Surface
Marian Jazmik is a retired teacher from Lancashire who has exploded onto the textile scene with her amazing sculptures and experimental surfaces inspired by nature.
She presents as a fearless, exuberant and prolific inventor of experimental surface using all manner of common household materials that she alters through the application of heat and in combination with stitch by hand and machine.
In this inspirational talk she generously showed us what she uses, how she works with it and the stunning results she gets. Marian listed numerous everyday products, many are plastic so are meltable; interfacing, cotton buds, plastic tubing, wires, curtain heading tape, florists mesh, fabric for suppressing, weeds, food trays, plastic bags, even a bath mat! Her tools are those that supply heat, soldering iron, hot air gun, candles and naked flames, not forgetting her sewing machine and a few ‘ordinary’ techniques.
Marian finds her inspiration in nature by using photography with a macro function that will reveal detail not obvious to the naked eye. She shows images of tree bark and foliage, the forest floor, lichens and fungi, cacti and seed heads.
This inspirational artist demonstrates an insatiable inquiry into a ‘what if’ practice, is clearly driven by process and manages to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. She uses paints and fabric dyes to subtly colour the textures but keeps mainly to white, off-white and neutrals but enjoys the singed and burnt effects that heat brings to the work.
She entertained us with amusing tales of internet opportunities that her husband warned her off, with a threat that these were scams. But she was undeterred and subsequently benefitted from the approaches and has had her work shown in some prestigious venues.
Marian is fully committed to the recycling and repurposing of products and materials that would otherwise go to landfill and her practice shows us that we are never more than a short step away from a plethora of useful stuff to further our creative endeavours. She manages to create original, stylish objects from everyday clutter that many of us just throw away without further thought. She presented an inspiring lesson in how to transform unlikely materials into new objects, through creative thinking and action.
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Words © Janet Edmonds/CETG 2024
Photos © Marian Jazmik
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