ROOM + WILD NATURALS: OLGA ZIEMSKA
Land art, also known as earth art, is built by sculpting the land itself or by creating structures with natural materials within the landscape.
Land art creator and public artist, Olga Ziemska mines nature, philosophy, and science in search of connection points among the physical forces, biological structures, and mystical underpinnings of existence. She often attempts to make visible those concepts or properties that are indiscernible to the naked eye, such as cellular formations or magnetism. By making visual associations between the visible and the invisible — or the microscopic and the macrocosmic —Olga poetically underscores the interrelatedness of all things.
Olga’s ethos is that “we are nature,” with landscape being an essential element to her work. Her larger-than-life, environmental art depicts a human-like vulnerability, forcing us to look at all of the living things in our world as one. The quiet power of Olga’s organic sculptures is in their profound simplicity and beauty, while their authentic aura of peace and mindfulness creates a feeling parallel to being surrounded by nature.
In R+W Naturals, we connect with extraordinary people making waves in sustainability, art, design, architecture, gastronomy, wellness, and wildlife — from travel and hospitality industry icons to acclaimed architects, designers, influential artists, forward-thinking musicians, and boundary-pushing chefs. We spoke to Olga about the interconnectedness of all natural elements, what’s next for sustainability in art, and “how our environment is reflected within us, not just around us.”
“My belief is that everything in life, in the universe, is nature. Everything in life is derived from the same basic elements that form everything in nature, including ourselves. Even our thoughts and creations are a process of nature. There is no separation. We are nature. ”
OCULUS Reclaimed tree logs and branches, metal, mirrored domes, The Morton Arboretum, Chicago, Illinois, USA
OCULUS explores the idea of shared vision and collective sight. Two human head profiles face each other, each with a single opening in the head in the shape of an eye. The two heads facing each other look out onto the world as one pair of eyes. The mirrored stainless steel spheres reflect the outside surroundings within. Showing how our environment is reflected within us, not just around us.
R+W: How has nature become your main source of inspiration?
OZ: My belief is that everything in life, in the universe, is nature. Everything in life is derived from the same basic elements that form everything in nature, including ourselves. Even our thoughts and creations are a process of nature. There is no separation. We are nature.
R+W: What role does the surrounding landscape play in each piece?
OZ: With the site-specific outdoor work I make, envisioning an artwork and responding to a site go hand in hand. I often use my work as a way to bring focus to the surrounding environment where a work is sited. The landscape, vistas, and views often become incorporated into the work and are an essential element. The artwork could not exist without the surrounding landscape.
Mind Eye, Locally reclaimed wood, RespirArt Sculpture Park: Dolomite Mountains, Italy
Mind Eye is a large-scale sculpture located 6,500 feet high in the Dolomite Mountains of Northern Italy. This sculpture was added to the RespirArt Sculpture Park permanent international art collection in 2015, with RespirArt Sculpture Park being one of the highest sculpture parks in the world. Ziemska created the work on-site in the mountains using her signature style of hand-bending metal to "draw" a three-dimensional image of a human head in profile. Locally reclaimed pine logs were then patterned one-by-one by hand within the sculpture framework. Mind Eye visually frames the beautiful Italian and Austrian mountains and sky within the sculptural form. The sculpture creates a heightened awareness of the beauty, stillness, and movement of the stunning surrounding natural landscape.
“I often use my work as a way to bring focus to the surrounding environment where a work is sited. The landscape, vistas and views often become incorporated into the work and are an essential element to the work. The artwork could not exist without the surrounding landscape. ”
R+W: How does the location of each piece effect its message?
OZ: The location of an artwork often provides the natural materials needed for creating the work. It also provides the foundation for the sculpture, and the site of an artwork becomes an essential visual and conceptual completion to the piece, which varies by location. What is typically considered the background of an artwork — the surrounding landscape or environment — is pulled forward and integrated within the work and also highlighted by the artwork. This allows for the artwork to fall back and mesh with the surrounding environment. I enjoy this type of visual movement and interchange between what is considered the positive and negative space of my work. What is important can be shifted visually. What is considered foreground and background, art and landscape, can be interchanged, intermixed and melded together.
Stillness in motion: The Matka Series (South Korea), locally reclaimed bamboo, metal, Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, South Korea
Stillness in Motion: The Matka Series is a body of work that explores the concept of place. In this ongoing series artist Olga Ziemska uses locally harvested trees that grow native to an area to create a female figure in various places all around the world. The word “Matka” in Polish means mother, a person that is significant to the idea of place, origin and our first physical and universal environment—the womb.
R+W: Your materials include recycled, reclaimed and locally collected wood or bamboo, with sustainability always being a central theme. Tell us about the importance of using reclaimed materials as part of your message.
OZ: With most of my work, there is an ephemeral quality to it, in that through the use of natural materials, the sculptures are always in a subtle state of flux and change. There is a natural life-span to the outdoor environmental artworks, therefore they are affected by the surrounding environment, weather, and time. The sculptures are in a slow and constant state of transformation and change, and the majority of my environmental artworks are intended to return back to nature in one form or another.
“There is a natural life-span to the outdoor environmental artworks, therefore they are affected by the surrounding environment, weather and time. The sculptures are in a slow and constant state of transformation and change and the majority of my environmental artworks are intended to return back to nature in one form or another. ”
I’m watching you watching me watching you, locally collected wood, metal, La Coyotera Artist Residency: Umercuaro, Michoacan, Mexico
R+W: Your pieces show an unparalleled connection between the human, the natural, and the supernatural, and evoke the feeling of interconnectedness. What is your overall message?
OZ: I feel that art can be a great connector. Art can be used in a way that communicates universally beyond cultural language and cultural beliefs, to a type of understanding that encompasses all of humans, nature, and the universe. In my work and life, I am less interested in focusing on what separates and fragments life — since this seems to be the pervading and prevalent habit — but rather I am focused on showing how everything in life, in the universe, is interconnected. This basic idea is within all of my work; this idea is the foundation and motivation that I have in creating art.
Stillness in motion: The Matka Series (Chicago USA), locally reclaimed wood, The Morton Arboretum, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Stillness in Motion: The Matka Series is a body of work that explores the concept of place. In this ongoing series artist Olga Ziemska uses locally harvested trees that grow native to an area to create a female figure in various places all around the world. The word “Matka” in Polish means mother, a person that is significant to the idea of place, origin and our first physical and universal environment—the womb.
“ Art can be used in a way that communicates universally beyond cultural language and cultural beliefs, to a type of understanding that encompasses all of humans, nature and the universe. ”
R+W: What feelings do you want people to be left with after immersing themselves in your pieces?
OZ: I use art as a tool for understanding life. Art is a great tool for remembering and reminding. I feel that I make art as a way of reminding people and myself to remember the things that we may have a tendency to forget or overlook about the world that is around us, above us, below us and within us— both seen and unseen.
ONA Reclaimed tree branches and tree trunks, metal, soil and sand infused sculpting medium, mirrors, glow-in-the-dark rocks, pebbles and sand, The Morton Arboretum, Chicago, Illinois, USA
ONA is a sculpture of a female head and bust emerging for the ground with wind blown tree branch hair. The word “ona” in Polish means “she”. The eyes are open and mirrored, gazing intently forward on the surrounding environment. The beautiful surrounding natural landscape is reflected within the eyes and within the sculptural form. Speckled over the surface of the head and bust of the sculpture are hundreds of glow-in-the-dark rocks, pebbles and sand particles which absorb the natural light of the sun during the day and by night result in an otherworldly celestial glow to the sculpture.
R+W: Your environmental pieces draw a strong parallel between human and land. The human is often depicted as part of nature, while nature is given a human vulnerability. You give landscape a voice, which can serve as a larger tool for promoting sustainability. What’s the next step for this initiative? Will you be taking this concept further? We would love to see you work with a non-profit organization.
OZ: I would welcome a creative collaboration with non-profit organizations and brands that are interested in reducing the environmental impact of humans by reducing waste through “collecting” and “transforming” it, as well as reusing it in unexpected ways through art. I also would welcome the opportunity to collaborate creatively with organizations that are in the process of reconsidering and transforming traditional building materials that often leave a heavy footprint on the environment, such as concrete and plastic, and re-envision these materials with natural resources, such as using algae-based plastics or mycelium.
“I would welcome the opportunity to collaborate creatively with organizations that want to re-envision traditional building materials as natural materials, such as algae-based plastics or mycelium building materials. ”
HEAR: With an Ear to the Ground River rock, mica flecks, grout, foam, metal, The Morton Arboretum, Chicago, Illinois, USA
HEAR is a sculpture of an oversized human head positioned in such a way that it appears to be at rest in its’ natural surroundings with one ear to the ground— listening. There is a quiet stillness to the artwork as it rests in the beautiful surroundings of Meadow Lake. Thousands of white river rock are patterned over the surface of the head creating a natural shimmering mosaic connecting the piece unobtrusively to the natural environment.
R+W: Room + Wild supports and works with hotels that take sustainable architecture to the next level. We would love to see your work as a large-scale installation in a landscape hotel. Does this sort of collaboration interest you?
OZ: Yes, this type of collaboration is of great interest to me. I am currently working with natural building methods used in architecture such as adobe, cob and straw-bale and incorporating them into my sculptural process and forms. With this new body of work, I am exploring the interior of the human body as sacred space and plan to make outdoor site-specific work that can be entered into and interacted with externally and internally, aesthetically and conceptually.
“I am currently working with natural building methods used in architecture such as adobe, cob and straw-bale and incorporating them into my sculptural process and forms. ”
STRATA, River rock, metal, artificial grass, The Morton Arboretum, Chicago, Illinois, USA
STRATA is inspired by a recurring theme in Ziemska’s work that considers the ‘body as landscape’. The sculpture of a reclining female figure appears to be emerging from or merging with the ground. Making connections between nature and the human body, STRATA reveals a cross-section of the earth and of the human body intertwined.
LISTEN… Locally reclaimed birch, plaster 16 feet height x 12 feet width x 6 inches depth Centre of Polish Sculpture: Oronsko, Poland
LISTEN is a site-specific outdoor sculpture made of long thin white birch logs limbs with human hands emerging from the top of the logs that are spelling out the word L I S T E N visually through hand gestures. By reading the sculpture with their eyes, the viewer activates their ears, and makes their body fully present and aware of the surrounding environment. LISTEN explores the idea of immersion and connection of the human body with landscape through use of sight and sound.
Olga Ziemska, artist
Olga Ziemska is a sculptor and public artist that lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. She is a recipient of many prestigious grants and awards including a Fulbright Fellowship in 2002 and a Creative Workforce Fellowship in 2009 and 2013. In 2007, Ziemska was selected as a Wendy L. Moore Emerging Artist by the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland and in 2018 selected as a Woman Artist to Watch by the Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery. She has participated in several residencies nationally and abroad, including the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Poland, YATOO International in Korea, RespirArt Sculpture Park in the Dolomite Mountains of Italy and the Taoyuan Land Art Festival in Taiwan. Her work is exhibited both nationally and internationally, with work reviewed in publications such as Juxtapose and Sculpture magazine. Ziemska has completed over 10 large-scale permanent indoor and outdoor public sculpture commissions in the United States and abroad. In addition to her current exhibition of 5 large-scale outdoor environmental sculptures at the Morton Arboretum, Ziemska is currently working on completing a large-scale outdoor public art project titled A Thousand Eyes for the City of Columbus, Ohio which will be unveiled in August 2023.
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