MARY E. BLACK GALLERY
1061 Marginal Rd, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, B3H 4P7, Canada
Nov 7, 2019 – Jan 19, 2020
Marjolein Dallinga was born in the Netherlands where she studied Fine Arts. She moved to Quebec, Canada, in 1989 to pursue her art career through making art books and jewelry..
She discovered the craft of felting after her immigration.
« I came to feel that felting was the medium most suitable for my artistic expression. Coming from a fine arts background I find the tension between the world of art and the world of craft very interesting . For me, felting is not primarily about the techniques and trick of the craft but a medium of artistic expression, with the growing interest in fibre arts, I see this expression as a challenge to continue my moving from the traditional craft of felting to finding innovative ways to create. »
The world-renowned “CIRQUE DU SOLEIL” became interested in Marjolein’s work, and for years she has experimented with felt for their costume design while also creating final products for their shows. Besides costume design she creates large sculptures with wool which have been exposed in museums and galleries worldwide. Marjolein has her own company, Bloomfelt.com, and works from her studio with sewing and dyeing rooms. She has taught felting workshops for fifteen years worldwide.
Artist statement :
« The life of this world is wind
Windblown we come, and windblown we go away.
All that we look on is windfall.
All we remember is wind. »
C. Wright
For more than twenty years, wool has been my medium and companion. If the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan stated, then what is the revelation of this material?
Felting is not something I do but a place I want to go, a language of the imagination, a challenging craft to consume my anxious energy.
Are we artists not all driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide?
This collection of works, « Move me/Touchez-moi », is a way to shatter me, to break my comfort zone, the protection which prevents the asking of questions. Sculptures give a greater sense of reality. That may seem a ridiculous word to use, but they have a greater substance, You can grab a sculpture. You can’t grab a painting. Viewers always want to touch the work.
The aliveness of this medium makes it feel close to our skin. I don’t really know why I make something, but I do know I want to make it. In art, I am free: everything is possible.
Here I can be open, thin skinned, easily yielding, very close to delight.
And the message? What is the message of all these soft sculptural pieces, these creations which look like mysterious hides or creatures from the sea or maybe enchanted forests?
Some remind us of body parts, strange organisms that look like animals but at the same time like plants or mushrooms or maybe corals.
Most of the felted pieces are expressions of the struggle with the body – they are about death and sex and the erotic life.
Sometimes they literally express sensations or emotions.
I only see how the pieces relate to each other afterwards. The work unfolds: each piece has a kind of connection to each other. Inspiration comes to me, through the cracks. I have to be open and take the risk. Does this art, do these felted pieces, become a way to live, a way to survive? The closeness of felt, almost a second skin, a friendship without a friend.
Marjolein Dallinga will exhibit his new work “The Vessels of the Heart (2019) – Wool and Linen”
at the Portneuf linen Biennale, which will take place from June 15 to September 29, 2019!
“Never ask your way to someone who knows it, because you could not go astray”
Rabbi Nachman
The detours of the heart, its secret folds.
With this theme “Byways and drifways”, I went simply playing with wool – an animal fiber – and with flax – a plant fiber.
Everything in my work expresses something both animal and vegetative world so the amalgamation of these two materials seems to me very appropriate because these two mediums wool and linen – carry well their characteristic and specific messages.
For the realization of this work, I started my path simply with a thick black rope in which I amalgamated the animal fibers of wool and linen , a vegetal material , using the technique of felting which is the perfect technique to combine both materials .
Very quickly this rope continued into another rope that then made detours, junctions, took the wrong paths, entangled …
, separations … Borrowed new paths … the colors have changed but also the widths, the thicknesses and even the shapes have changed!
A metamorphosis certainly!
Without a predetermined plan, my journey was more spontaneous, more intuitive, I continued my creative process and my work finally began to look like multiple roots but also like veins, arteries and finally like a heart, multiple metaphors …..
I let myself go … Go drifting
My work leads me almost in spite of myself, I leave my shore and venture into the meanders of a sinuous path, strange and unknown contours of my soul; it’s hard sometimes to recognize and follow.
I do not know where the detours of my heart will lead me, as well I am surprised by its hidden folds.
However, I continue my path: I must admit that I like to lose myself in the byways of this imaginary road, dreamlike but so close to my reality ….
Below is a link to an interview given by the artist Marjolein Dallinga about the process of her work (in french !):
117 Saint Joseph Street, Deschambault, QC G0A 1S0
Biennale internationale du lin de Portneuf | 105, rue De Chavigny, Deschambault-Grondines (Québec) G0A 1S0 | Téléphone : (819) 376-8201 | Courriel : info(A)biennaledulin.ca
Or who has invented my life?
For more than twenty years, creations were made mostly with wool. All kinds of things really: toys , scarves ,dresses, and handbags but also wall hangings ,sculptures and fantastic costumes. If the medium is the message, as the Canadian Marshall McLuhan stated, then what is the revelation of this material?
Are we artists not all driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide ?
Inspirations came and come from so many direction — some from walks in the forest ,some from books or exhibits. Then there are ideas like the seven deadly sins or dreams like the garden of delights.
But why this wool?
Why the loving of the felt?
Why love felt making ?
The wool is light and feral; it comes in so many colours and characters and qualities that surprise but also give tranquility because it feels so strangely common.
It is chaotic and wild and untamed ,still so close to the animal, who grows it generously several times a year.
Then the craft of felting ,the entangling of the fibers to a sturdy ,solid sculptable material .
Felted , that fluffy soft hair is caught in a material which looks like something close to animal hides, maybe even our own skin.
As wool it is free and flowing but as felt, it is imprisoned by its own hair.
As substance it gives us protection ,warmth ,insulation but its density can also invite sensations of breathlessness maybe even suffocation.
The feel of wool is inviting to touch — we felters can’t resist the allure of its possibilities .
The laying out of the carefully combed or carded fibers. Designs with intricate patterns and forms . Fascinating color combinations, placing the wool filaments in all kind of directions sometimes mixed with silks or other fibers .This painting, this shingling hair by hair, done with presence and attention is calming for the mind. The result is enchanting .
Everything changes when we start to felt — adding the soapy water ,the rubbing and rolling ,the endless massaging ( Ever wondered what is behind that need of caressing our material for hours ,maybe every day?). Gently to start with ,to give the wool time to come together and then working with more force, entangles it forever in a new form .
The final hardening and shaping is intense and sometimes almost violent ,especially when the final work is voluminous and heavy in weight.
The intense physical labour can be very gratifying when making very large pieces — almost a “peak” experience . It can take months to prepare and it can be physically painful in the body, but getting there, is very satisfying .
The aliveness of this medium makes it feel close to our skin. The fact that we make it almost solely with our hands with no tools or screens , the experience of shaping the wool only with touch into a completely unique creation is outstanding .
Sometimes it feels as if the making seems to be more important then what is made. Usually the final result leaves a feeling of disappointment. But never the less, the next idea is already popping up in the mind and creating excitement for the next project.
And the message?
What is the message of all those soft sculptural pieces ?
All those creations which look like mysterious hides or creatures from the sea or maybe enchanted forests. Some remind us of body parts ,strange organisms that look like animals but at the same time like plants or mushrooms or maybe corals .
Do they express sensations which otherwise would stay unnoticed but want to be seen and “felt”?
In fact is not all art about existential questions? Who are we? What is life? Why death? What is the intent of sexuality? Why there is illness ? Why are we alienation from our body?
Questions we have no conclusive answers for.
Maybe Art is an attempt to handle all those questions , like science and religion try in their own particular ways.
Most of the felted art pieces are expressions of the struggle with the body —they are about death and sex, sometimes quite literarily express sensations or emotions.
Does this art ,do these felted pieces become a way to live ,a way to survive ?
Still every day ,when waking up the first thing really calling is the wool ,the studio and the next creation to felt
The wool ,light and malleable but modest and so versatile. Its forgiving nature is inviting ,relatively inexpensive easily open to extensive experimentation
The closeness of felt ,almost a second skin, a friendship without a friend.
WORKSHOP OF BOCAGE 31
Training center textile, wool felt, fiber and color
atelierdubocage31@nullgmail.com
Such. : 33 (0) 561 981 222
Siret number: 481 360790000 28
Training organization number: 73 3107496 31
Address: LA COUECH – 31310 MONTBRUN-BOCAGE – France
Join the artist MARJOLEIN DALLINGA from July 15 to July 24 2019 for a summer residence in the south of France, a two-part manual wool felt session.
Marjolein Dallinga was born in the Netherlands where she studied fine arts. She moved to Montreal, Canada, in 1989 to pursue her artistic career by making art books and jewelry. While raising a family, her creativity led her to make toys and teach art classes. This led her to discover felting, and she is now working in this environment.
CIRQUE DU SOLEIL, a world-renowned artist, has been interested in Marjolein’s work, and over the past five years she has been experimenting with felt for designing their costumes while creating finished products for their shows.
Marjolein has her own company, Bloomfelt.com, and works from her studio with sewing and dyeing rooms. She has taught felting for fifteen years in North and South America, Europe and Australia. Last year, she won three awards for her costumes made for the WOW (world of wearable art) in New Zealand.
For more information: www.bloomfelt.com
His workshop of artistic practice manual wool felt will take place in two parts, separated by two days “off” during which the workshop will remain available to students who need it or, for those who wish, activities will be organized .
WORKSHOP MARJOLEIN DALLINGA PROGRAM JULY 15th / 24th
1st PART: from July 15th to 17th:
Sculptural felting workshop of 3 days: “inside out, upside down“, or “upside down“
It is from the dance of conflicting emotions that creativity and art are born. Although sculpture is generally perceived as static, I see it more as a movement, the movement of wool from the fibers to the felt.
And as long as there is movement, there is life.
This three-day workshop will deepen the awareness of the experiences learned from sculpture with felt and other fibers. We will explore different ideas of sculptural forms, with the theme “upside down”, to become more aware of how we want to use this medium and why. We will focus on the basics like color, design and artwork concepts.
Students will be challenged to play with their own designs using sculptural felting techniques, deepening their knowledge of the creative process, focusing on the path and not the end result. It is an experimental discovery workshop.
At the end of each day, we will discuss creations to increase awareness of color and design choices. An exhibition of all the work will complete the course. You do not create art, it already exists, you must let it come to you, go where art is instead of trying to create it.
Act according to your imagination and your creativity, without attachment to the result.
JULY 18 and 19 :
2 DAYS OFF with workshop availability and organization of activities
PART 2: JULY 20-24 :
5 days workshop
“Wearable art“
“Sartorial art“
This five-day workshop will deepen the awareness of the experiences learned from sculpture with felt and other fibers. We will explore different ideas of sculptural forms, with themes such as: folding and unfolding, relief construction, addition of shape to another surface. All to become more aware of how and why we want to use this support.
This workshop is inspired by the idea of working to make a portable sculpture, a “sartorial” sculpture. In the first days, we will play with the processes of shortening, thickening, tightening and narrowing of the felted surfaces, in order to realize our original element of sculptural artistic clothing.
We will focus on the basic elements of color, design, and design of a work of art. Students will be challenged to play with their own designs using sculptural felting techniques, while deepening their knowledge of the creative process by focusing on the idea of travel. It is an experimental discovery workshop. At the end of each day, we will discuss creations to increase awareness of color and design choices. An exhibition of all the work will complete the course. You do not create art, it already exists, you must let it come to you, go where art is instead of trying to create it, Act according to your enthusiasm, without attachment to the result!
Experience in basic felting techniques is required to follow this workshop.
Maximal 12 students*
To download a registration form directly to this workshop: yes I click on the link below:
ENGLISH INSCRIPTION MARJOLEIN 2019
To consult the web page of Marjolein Dallinga
To consult the Facebook page of Marjolein Dallinga
Facebook page of Felt Training France
Flourish !
By Carolyne Hart February 26, 2019
Telephone number: 605-688-4313
Flourish: Marjolein Dallinga & Jantje Visscher, a Jodi Lundgren curated exhibition, opens today at South Dakota Art Museum and runs through Aug. 4, 2019. As the museum’s Curator of Exhibits, Lundgren is adept at identifying and connecting artists and works with contrasting styles and mediums tied together through common themes and sources of inspiration.
In Flourish, visitors experience Marjolein Dallinga’s intriguing felted sculptural works displayed alongside Jantje Visscher’s dazzling drawings in light. Together, the vibrancy of light and shadow, color and material, and organic patterns take center stage. United through the drama and beauty of organic unfolding, these works provide a magical view of natural forms.
Marjolein Dallinga’s felted forms emphasize color and the physicality of material while Visscher’s light drawings emphasize the immateriality of light and shadow. Despite a major divergence between the practices of these two artists in terms of their materials and processes, both artists embrace organic dynamics in the creation of powerful works with visceral appeal. Their abstraction of natural elements heightens the viewer’s experience of universal organic aesthetics. Alluring and mysterious forms pull viewers up close to discover the richness of glimmering or saturated details. Layers upon layers build into vast networks of beautifully interconnected patterns. The expansion and scaling of simple root elements into these substantial and mesmerizing forms replicate a natural process that imbues these works with the pulsing vigor of life, growth, and infinite possibility.
Lundgren brought the artworks of these two artists together for the first time through a process of discovery and connection that is typical of her curated exhibitions. She first became aware of Dallinga’s practice after South Dakota Art Museum Director, Lynn Verschoor, also a fiber artist in her own right, participated in a Minnesota Felting Guild workshop led by Dallinga at the Textile Center in Minneapolis. Lundgren said that Verschoor was so enthusiastic about Dallinga’s work that she began putting the pieces in place to bring her felted sculptures and wearable costume art to South Dakota Art Museum. “Lynn was entranced with Dallinga’s work and I knew that others would be too. I could see they would be intriguing to people with and without a deep appreciation for felting and fiber arts,” Lundgren noted.
In parallel, Lundgren was beginning the curation process for Ripple Effects: Artworks from the Permanent Collection (November 15, 2018 – May 5, 2019). A 1987 Visscher painting in the museum’s collection caught Lundgren’s attention and led her to learn about Visscher’s more recent exhibitions of light sculptures. “Her use of light as a drawing material is fascinating. Installing her works is challenging but well worth the effort when I see how visitors react and interact with them,” Lundgren said.
Marjolein Dallinga
Marjolein Dallinga’s sculptures are built through the process of wet felting, whereby layers of wool fibers are worked by hand into solid pieces. Wet felting is an ancient technique that is incredibly direct and requires very little mechanical intervention. This allows for a painterly expressiveness and creative freedom that appeals to Dallinga, who has utilized it to amazing effects.
Dallinga studied graphic arts and painting at Minerva Academy, a fine arts institute in Groningen Holland, where she was born. After spending subsequent years mostly painting and drawing while raising a family in Canada, Marjolein Dallinga discovered felting and found a perfect fit between her artistic practice and personal lifestyle. As she fell in love with the discipline, the creation of simple accessories like handbags, mittens, and hats, gave way to teaching the techniques of felting through her Atelier Bloomfelt, and orders for custom-made pieces.
Marjolein Dallinga’s expansion into theatrical costumes and costume parts led to collaborations with Cirque du Soleil, which she feels is the most exciting outcome of her development because of its experimental nature. Marjolein Dallinga has become a noted fiber artist within the international sphere, submitting prize-winning works to the annual World of Wearable Art show (WOW) in New Zealand since 2011.
Jantje Visscher
Jantje Visscher uses light energy as a drawing material, creating wall installations out of focused light projected onto and through manipulated strips of transparent plastics. Most of Visscher’s works in various media involve an exploration of motion, pattern, and perception through the lens of science and geometry. Her light drawings focus on the physics of light and the optical effects of caustics, the scientific term for this envelope of reflections and refractions that is created when light hits curved or bent transparent materials. The ethereal, non-specific, rhythmic forms she creates inspire wonder and transcend the simplicity and mechanical nature of the materials she is working with.
Visscher earned an MFA from the University of California at Berkeley. She has received a Bush Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Midwest, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her work is represented in the collections of the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Weisman Art Museum, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art. She has been a longtime part of the Twin Cities arts community—working as a painter, printmaker, photographer, sculptor, teacher and mentor. She is a founding member of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota and of the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art.
About South Dakota Art Museum
South Dakota Art Museum is located at 1036 Medary Avenue in Brookings and is open daily except for upcoming holiday and winter closures: May 27 (Memorial Day), July 4 (Independence Day) and Sundays through March. Admission to the museum is free. Parking is also free in the museum’s reserved lot just west of the museum on Harvey Dunn Street.
For more information, call (605) 688-5423,
email: sdsu.sdam@nullsdstate.edu
or visit: SouthDakotaArtMuseum.com
The prestigious international exhibition tour WOW – World of Wearable Art move to St-Petersburg in Russia !
Erarta Museum, St Petersburg, on Saturday 6th October 2018 until Sunday 3rd February 2019, not a revolution !
We are delighted to advise you that the latest WOW – World of Wearable Art exhibition will open to the public in St Petersburg, Russia at the Erarta Museum on Saturday 6th October 2018 where it will be showcased until Sunday 3rd February 2019. The Erarta Museum is the largest private museum in Russia, whose collection, containing 2800 works by more than 300 artists from various regions of the country, is on permanent exhibit, and temporary exhibitions of paintings, sculpture, photography, fashion, design, architecture, and video art, of which there are over 50 staged every year. For seven years of its existence.
the Erarta Museum has been included in ―Top ten museums of Russia according to Trip Advisor tourist portal. National Geographic magazine has named the museum among the Petersburg’s top five places worth visiting.
It has also become the first museum of contemporary art to be presented at the Google Art Project.
Press articles about Marjolein Dallinga :
There will be an exhibition of Marjolein Dallinga’s artistic works from September 21 to October 28, 2018 at Salon Laurette
1850 Center Street in Montreal H3K 1J2
opening on September 21st at 5 pm
Felt Marjolein Dallinga
and watercolors Anne-Laure Bixquert
You are welcome
Bloomfelt will be represented by Marjolein Dallinga at the Twist Fiber Festival in Saint-André Avelin from August 15th to 19th, 2018
TWIST is an annual rendezvous, a foray into the world of textile fiber, for the general public, amateurs, fiber producers, fiber breeders, processors, artists, artisans , the professionals and the curious.
TWIST is 5 days (5 days of workshops, 3 days of festivities open to the general public), about 50 workshops, more than 140 exhibitors, a gourmet fair, free activities for children, textile demonstrations and Moreover.
Complete workshop. No more places available
Surprise :
A beautiful web video made by Tele-Quebec, the public TV in Quebec
filmed at the site of Studio 42-Bloomfelt showing the art of Marjolein Dallinga
Here is reproduced in its integrality, the chronicle announced a few days ago on the visit of the show “La Fabrique culturelle .tv” by Tele-Quebec on the premises of Studio 42, the magical place where Marjolein Dallinga draws inspiration from the rejuvenating nature of the Laurentian region in Quebec.
Nature that she appreciates above all else, it is also the place where she will henceforth give workshops devoted to her Art in a paradisiac framework favoring the creation and the expression of the natural talents just waiting to emerge in a place as beautiful!
And now, let’s see the report! :
Phantasmagorical felt of Marjolein Dallinga
Having had the chance to experiment and refine her technique with Cirque du Soleil and rub shoulders with the great François Barbeau, Marjolein Dallinga brings the ancient technique of felting away from busy trails. His pieces are large, long, colorful, organic, spectacular. Sometimes they go, or else blend in nature. Walk and meet at the Bloomfelt workshops in Gore, in the Laurentians.
Marjolein’s practice is so singular that many organizations all over the world are asking this woman every year to come and teach felting at home. She also devotes several months a year to teaching, a journey that often allows her to revisit her native country, the Netherlands.
https://www.bloomfelt.com/
Credits
Director, camera and editing: Yves Whissell
Coordination: Nadine Deschamps and François DesRochers
Model: Michelle Bastien