“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
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.
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 .
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!
Costume Creation: Bloomfelt; Marjolein Dallinga for World of Wearable Art – New Zealand
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:
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.
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
The Artist
Marjolein Dallinga = opening on September 21st
In parallel, Lundgren was beginning the curation process for 
very happy with my new studio