“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 …..
Marjolein Dallinga: original work for the Biennale du Lin
I let myself go … Go drifting
An impressive view of the realism of Marjolein Dallinga’s work that gives an idea of the work required …
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 !):
Biennale internationale du lin de Portneuf | 105, rue De Chavigny, Deschambault-Grondines (Québec) G0A 1S0 | Téléphone : (819) 376-8201 | Courriel : info(A)biennaledulin.ca
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 forRipple 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.
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.
I have been working very hard for more than two months to create “Mélusine”.
She is 3 meters long and has 596 openings.
To make it all happen, I received some weeks of assistance from one of my students.
Thanks for your generosity, Tinie!
It took 8 days to felt it completely…..
She seems to belong to the water.
Melusine is a figure of European folklore, a feminine spirit of fresh water in a sacred spring or river. She is usually depicted as a woman who is a serpent from the waist down (much like a mermaid)
In parallel, Lundgren was beginning the curation process for 
