On Art
Natural Resonance
Olga Ziemska (b. 1976) is a visual artist based in Cleveland who creates sculpture, installations, environmental art, and public art. Her work deals with the role of humanity within nature, and she sees humanity as an integral part of nature. It’s also concerned with reflecting, hearing, listening and looking, and her human forms are often made with organic materials. Ziemska’s studio is near Lake Erie, and she was born and raised in Ohio. Ziemska also feels at home in Warsaw, Poland, close to a multitude of forests. Her parents and older brother immigrated to the U.S. from Poland, and she grew up in a Polish household.
BY SIGALIT ZETOUNI
In 1999, Ziemska received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Columbus College of Art and Design, and, with a 2002 Fulbright Fellowship, she studied art in Warsaw. In 2005, Ziemska received a Master Studies degree in sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design. Later, in 2007, she was selected as a Wendy L. Moore Emerging Artist by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland. She has participated in several residencies nationally and abroad, and her work is exhibited throughout the globe.
In 2015, Ziemska installed a sculpture in Italy. Titled Mind Eye and placed in an art park in the Dolomite Mountains, Ziemska created the work from locally reclaimed wood and metal. The birch branches, Swiss stone pine, and hazel trees represent human cells, coupled with empty space that symbolizes the mind, presenting a view of the surrounding landscape, including the pinnacles of the Latemar mountains. The “open-air museum” was named RespirArt, and became one of the highest art parks in the world.
RespirArt is located in a ski and hiking resort in Pampeago, extending to Trentino. The space shows breathtaking panoramas. In 2017, Italian artist Federico Seppi (b. 1990), who in his work has focused on nature’s transformation, installed a work called Simulacrum in the art park. Seppi created his piece with hazel wood and copper and presented an image of a raindrop slipping through the branches. The art park currently has 36 art installations that are joined by a new piece each summer. The installations morph and correspond to the changing seasons.
In 2022, RespirArt began to exhibit sound art. Miscele Aria Factory studio created sound works for the park’s installations. Visitors could rent wireless headphones and listen to sounds paired with the art installations. Using a 3D technique, visitors could perceive the audio at 360 degrees. The sounds of wild animals, atmospheric phenomena and various effects were emitted. The immersive experiences, where music and words were reworked using poetic methods, became sound art.
Much closer to home, The Morton Arboretum in Lisle is currently showing a solo exhibition by Ziemska titled, Of the Earth. In Polish, Ziemska means “of the earth.” The works contain reclaimed and pruned tree branches, along with other natural materials gathered from various locations throughout the Morton Arboretum’s 1,700 acres. “I am giving reclaimed natural materials a new life and transforming them from nature into new forms,” Ziemska said. (mortonarb.org/explore/activities/exhibitions/of-the-earth/)
For the exhibition, Ziemska installed five different sculptures throughout Morton Arboretum. Stillness in Motion: The Matka Series is the latest in Ziemska’s Matka (“mother” in Polish) series. The sculpture is outside the Arboretum’s Visitor Center at Arbor Court, created mostly from willow tree branches, and presents a female figure that is 6-feet-tall. Another piece, situated on the south side of Meadow Lake, is titled Hear: With an Ear to the Ground. The sculpture is made from thousands of white and light cream river rocks that pattern the surface of a 5-feet-tall horizontal human head. The work portrays the act of listening to sounds of the earth. A third work, Oculus, is located near the Maple Collection. Ziemska shows two 10-feet-tall head profiles, looking at each other. The head profiles are filled with hundreds of tree cross sections of varying sizes, as well as mirrored eyes, reflecting the surroundings. Another work, Strata, is at the base of a hill by the Crabapple Collection. The sculpture is a 45-feet-long female figure, lying on her back, and appears to emerge from the earth. Strata is filled with dark and light layered river rocks, and Ziemska seems to represent humans as layers of nature. Moreover, the complexity of earth is represented by layers. Ona (the word for “she” in Polish) is located in an open field, on the Arboretum’s west side. The 14-feet-tall piece exhibits a bust of a woman with windswept hair, made of tree branches and eyes of mirrors. The eyes are open, looking forward, and mirror the surroundings. Ziemska’s works are in conversation with the landscape, and the time of the day and seasons are naturally reflected. The exhibition is scheduled to run through the spring of 2025.
Stillness in Motion by Olga Ziemska
6 ft tall x 12 ft long x approx 8 ft wide
With an Ear to the Ground by Olga Ziemska
5 ft high x 6.5 ft long x 6 ft deep
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Supergraphics
In 2019, LAXART presented an exhibition by California-based artist Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, titled Relax Into the Invisible. Curated by Catherine Taft and Hamza Walker, the exhibition showed works on paper, sculpture, site-specific Supergraphics, and artist books, and displayed Solomon’s design insights as she played with language, feminism, politics, and personal narrative. During an exhibition walk- through, co-curator Hamza Walker talked about the influence of the 1920’s Russian avant-garde on Solomon’s work. Walker emphasized artist El Lissitzky, who was a Constructivist and studied in Germany and Russia. Solomon’s use of color was similar to Lissitzky’s, whose most famous work was a 1919 poster, “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge.” In the poster, the red wedge symbolized the Bolsheviks, who battled the White movement during the Russian Civil War.
The poster was a product of a Constructivism that wished for art to serve a social purpose. Both Lissitzky and Solomon experimented with graphic design, and both studied architecture and promoted ideologies through art.
BY SIGALIT ZETOUNI
In 1956, after the death of her husband, Solomon moved to Basel, Switzerland, to study graphic design at the Basel Art Institute. When Solomon returned to San Francisco, her modernist design methods were new to California, and she founded a productive graphic design office. Later, Solomon studied Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.
Solomon is known primarily for her Supergraphics. Since the 1960s, she has been painting large and bold wall graphics that respond to architectural space. She created the interiors, and the logo, for Sea Ranch, a planned community on the coast of Northern California. In the 1960s, Sea Ranch was where design and envi- ronment integrated. Solomon also brought Swiss Modernism and engaged it with California Pop.
Currently in Chicago, viewers can see site-specific Supergraphics by Solomon at the Graham Foundation. There, the walls are painted with bold letters and black and red symbols. Solomon turned the white walls of the 1902 house to play a role in the exhibition Exits Exist, forming an immersive environment. Solomon’s typographic process also extended beyond the walls. She created a series of three-dimensional sculptural objects. Moreover, in the bookshop, Solomon’s artist books are on view.
When I visited the exhibition and looked out one of the windows, I could see a delivery van with the FedEx logo. The logo had a white arrow in the negative space, between the letters E and X, and was a forward drive, denoting speed, direction, and precision.
It was designed by Lindon Leader in 1994 (while Leader was a senior design director at Landor Associates in their San Francisco office). He worked with Universe 67 and Futura typefaces and noted in an interview in blog/zine, The Sneeze, that he, “…combined them into unique and proprietary letterforms that included both ligatures (connected letters) and a higher x-height, or increased size of the lower-case letters relative to the capital letters. I worked these features around until the arrow seemed quite natural in shape and location.” (thesneeze.com)
Leader’s interests have been versatile. In 1972, he graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Political Science. In 1978, he received a BFA in Advertising Design from the Art Center College of Design. In 2001, he started a strategic design consultancy in Park City, Utah. And throughout, he created identities for major branding firms worldwide, including CIGNA, Hawaiian Airlines, DoubleTree Hotels, Banco Bradesco, and Progress Energy. Leader’s background, similar to Solomon, is diverse and unique.
Exits Exist is now on view at the Graham Foundation, in the Madlener house, through February 4, 2023. Organized by Sarah Herda, director, realized by Ava Barrett, program and communications manager, together with Alexandra Lee Small, senior advisor, this exhibition can be viewed in person. To register, go to http://grahamfoundation.org/public_exhibitions/6304-exits-exist.
Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, “This Woman Questions the Quotes,” ca. 2018. Mixed media on paper, 8.5 x 11 in. Courtesy of the artist.
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