Arts IN Focus on PBS Fort Wayne is funded in part by the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne.

Coming up, we'll talk with wood artist Norman Ziolkowski and photographer Bayan Yunis.

It's all next on Arts IN Focus.

Welcome to Arts IN Focus.

I'm Emilie Henry.

Norman Ziolkowski began working with Wood as a teenager, learning from his father, a wood pattern maker.

Visual art first got his attention in college, and afterward, while shaping and assembling wood patterns, he envisioned one day using his skills to make sculpture.

Now, working out of his home studio here in Fort Wayne, Norman creates beautiful, one of a kind works of art that aim to give the viewer an appreciation for the inherent beauty of wood.

Norman Thank you for having us here today.

Your wood sculptures are stunning.

So when did you start working with wood?

Oh, I started when I was a teenager and my dad had a business.

He was a wood pattern maker.

Head has his own business, and frequently I would, you know, go over there and sweep the floor.

And he'd get me started in woodworking when I was a kid.

And that.

So it's been a long time.

But you didn't feel like that was an artistic outlet that didn't feel like artistry to you?

Not until when I was in college, I. I took a music history course, and it kind of got me interested in art.

And after that, it was this.

This thing on my mind.

Maybe someday I'd like to do that.

Maybe someday I could.

But as far as the artistic side of it, I that is been a definitely a learning curve.

I felt somewhat, you know, unqualified.

I have no formal training in visual art, and I was just quite a bit inhibited.

You know, I just I'm not an artist.

I'm not a formal artist and never went to school and all this.

And I and I was somewhat hesitant to try to express myself in the sculptures I made.

I said, Well, this is going to be weird.

People arent going to like it or something.

But over a period of time, over a few years, I have been gaining more confidence in what I'm doing.

And so that's been a definite learning curve for me.

Let's talk a little bit about your sculptures.

They are so beautiful.

It's hard for me to believe that you haven't been doing this since infancy.

How do you come up with a design?

First of all, what sort of inspires that?

And then how do you go about deciding how to execute it?

Well, there are a number of ways that I come up with the design.

Sometimes it's just a sketch on paper, you know, over the over something comes very quickly.

Sometimes over the course of or sometimes it takes a while over a few days or even weeks.

Sometimes I play with a sketch.

Sometimes I just pick up a piece of wood and try to decide what I'm going to do with it.

You know, I put some lines on it.

I look, I look at the grain, I look at any imperfections in the wood, and I come up with something.

And in that way, and there's there's other other ways, too.

Sometimes I'll start a sculpture and I'll just set it aside because something isn't right.

My original plan isn't going to work, and I'll just set it aside and come back to it later.

Sometimes I have pieces of sculpture that I set aside that I didn't use, and I will bring them together and make something that works.

I mean, there's quite a few ways that I come up with my ideas, so.

So how much of your process is creative thinking in terms of how can I make this happen?

Well, the artistic side of it takes up more of my attention when I'm working or not working and thinking about it all day long and woodworking aspect of it does take a significant amount of time.

But it's not, is it not is not as much time as the artwork itself coming up with the design.

I'm very, very extremely conscious and motivated to come up with something that is original and that is artistically good, I guess.

So how do you describe your work?

What is artistically good to Norman?

Usually it takes awhile I'll make something and immediately I might like it, but over a course of time my judgment changes a little bit and say, Well, it's I can do better than that.

So it's it's just a matter of getting the idea, thinking about it for a while, saying, is this going to work or isn't going to work?

And then making the sculpture.

And sometimes after that thinking, was that the best idea?

Was that the best way to go about it?

Is that express what you want it to make?

And so it's it's quite a long process.

It involves time before and after I complete the sculpture, I guess, too, when you start to have those second guessing thoughts.

If you're if you're working on a piece that you just don't feel is working, do you abandon the whole piece or do you just go back to the drawing board and try to rework it or I just set it aside, Don't abandon it.

I just set it aside with the intention that, well, I'll pick this up eventually, sometime in the future.

I mean, there's an unfinished sculpture in my bedroom sitting on a shelf that's been there for three years.

when Im sitting on my or laying on my bed on my bed, I look at it and try to come up with ideas on what to do with it.

And it's been there for three years.

So some days Ill eventually complete it.

Do you have a favorite type or species of wood to to make your pieces?

First, when I was making smaller things, I favored more hard wood, more dense wood, because it's just I don't know it it has a feel to it that seems to me increase its worth.

But over time I've been making larger sculptures and I've been finding out that the harder the wood is the more work it is to to sculpt it and and complete the form that that I want to make.

So I've been leaning more towards softer woods like a softer mahogany or softer maple and I want to talk through your your process a little bit.

I know that we've hit some some different points of it.

You so you have your kind of design phase where you're sketching and that or perhaps just putting lines on an actual piece of wood.

What happens from there?

Is it just, you know, a series of different tools?

What happens after the the initial idea is greenlit?

Well, I always try to to take the generally I'm starting with a block of wood, a big piece of wood.

And I try to I make it as parallel and square as possible.

You know what I'm that it's not a rough cut piece of wood.

I, I want one thing I try to emphasize in my work is the precision of it.

And I try to do that.

To accomplish that, I need to start with a block of wood that is perfectly flat and parallel on both sides and square on the edges, because from there I established the design of the lines many, many times I'm using a symmetrical design and it's important that everything is dimensionally mirrored on both sides of the piece.

And so I have to start with a very precisely formed piece of wood in terms of a rectangle or square or whatever.

And from there I start putting shape in it in one direction, then I put shape in it in another direction, then I put shape in it and the third direction.

And from there I, I work out all the more the, the, the remaining surfaces that need to be finalized and and completed to finish the work.

When you are sketching the piece, are you thinking of it in terms of that initial block of wood and then what has to be taken away and sort of the the negatives and my brain just doesn't work that way.

So it's fascinating to think of of conceptualizing it and then making it happen on a block of wood.

Well, yeah, with a block of wood.

When I start with the wood and say I'm going to do something with this piece of wood that I do start thinking about immediately, how am I going to cut this?

How am I going to shape this form?

How am I going to put this surface in there?

How am I going to do that?

And but when I'm sketching on paper, it's a little bit different.

I'm trying to do it just to be come up with something artistic in the woodworking aspect of it is some back in my mind.

I'm not thinking about it and, and it usually the problems come forward when I get in the shop and say, okay, how am I going to do this now?

And I have to work out all the details and that's sometimes a bit of a challenge.

Then how do you finish off a piece?

Do you do you stain it?

Do you seal it?

How does that work?

Generally, I don't use stain.

I like the look and feel of the of the naturally finished wood.

And I, I use a poly urethane finish.

Now I'm kind of going to start experimenting with different finishes.

But it's the one thing I do though is I sand the surface.

I get most of the surfaces.

Sometimes I have a rough surface for contrast, but most of the surfaces on my sculpture are sanded too, like a really fine grit sandpaper to make it extremely smooth.

I start out with a rough bit sandpaper and work down to there to where it feels almost like glass sometimes, knowing how much thought and care and time goes into all of your pieces.

Does it matter to you how they're received?

Do you do you have an expectation as to what you want people to feel or take away when they see your work?

Yes, definitely.

It matters a lot to me.

I think it would matter a lot to any artist.

What I want people to take away from it is I think of it in terms of myself as a musician.

Very often music is something that heals and bring inner peace and serenity to to ourselves when we're troubled or something like that.

And I think visual art should do the same thing to some extent.

Art should uplift and and kind of draw someone out of all the troubles of the world and and bring them into the the better side of humanity and what we can produce.

And I try to replicate the therapeutic effect that music often has.

I try to replicate that in the art I make so that people can look at my art and and somehow be, I don't know, uplifted in some sense.

Yeah, I love that answer.

That's perfect.

What has art taught you about yourself?

The value of hard work and perseverance and having a goal is something that is indispensable.

The idea of not giving up.

And, you know, we're all here on this earth for a purpose and that you can find your purpose in life and fulfill it somehow.

I think that's something that's important to me.

Your work is exquisite.

I see some things in person here and just looking at the photos, everything looks perfect and certainly looking at your pieces brings me calm and peace and serenity.

So thank you so much.

Please continue to create and thank you for taking the time today.

Oh, thanks.

Thanks so much for having me here.

For more information visit Norman Ziolkowski dot com I'm joined now by photographer Bayan Yunis.

Bayan, thank you so much for being here.

I'm thrilled to talk to you.

You are so talented and there are lots of layers here.

Start with when you became interested in photography.

Yeah.

So I became interested in photography when my sister was taking photo classes herself.

I was her model, and even though I dreaded every moment of it when I entered high school, I was like, You know, I need an art class.

Why not try this out?

And it just kind of stuck.

When you started in photography, did you immediately start with digital or were you using a film camera?

How did you kind of dip your toe in?

Yeah.

So the way that Carol High School's photography program works is like the first year you focus on just like the fundamentals of film.

You start out with film in the darkroom and then you move on to like digital and composition.

Did you feel like learning the film aspect of it and developing and all that informed the way you produce art now?

I would say with just like how time consuming it is, made me a little bit impatient and like I looked forward to digital more.

But I will say the beauty and developing and just like being a part of every step of making that photograph was very rewarding.

Okay.

I am fascinated by your work because you I don't know if you if it's done in the editing or how you work with basically silhouettes to make one image out of several images.

It's just beautiful.

I'm obviously not articulating it well.

One of your pieces in particular cut from the same cloth.

Yeah.

I love.

I stared at that for a long time.

It's so beautiful.

I want to know how you executed it.

But before that, I want to know what gave you the idea.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

By the way, I would say with all of my images, with the exception of my newest series, I just go, I don't have a particular process.

Like I whenever I have the motivation, I'll take like hundreds of, like self-portraits or, like, draw silhouettes.

And when I do feel motivated to create, I'll just look at my giant reservoir of images and I'll just like, pick.

And so when I made cut from the same cloth, I really I love mirroring.

So I was like, Oh, this one like the eyes were like very intense, like, Let's go with this.

And I just I don't really know.

I just kind of made it.

And then like later on to take a took some like analyzing my work to realize what the meaning behind it is.

Okay, so am I am I hearing you correctly that you just take a bunch of photos and then you decide what the final image is going to be?

Yes.

Do you ever decide what the final image is going to be and then take photos to make that happen?

Never, no.

That's insane.

Okay.

You also mentioned that you were your sister's model when she was doing photography.

I assume maybe she still is.

And you hated it, but now you are your own model all the time?

For the most part.

Yeah.

Yes.

Which is so cool.

What made you decide after loathing it to just be your own model?

I suppose convenience.

Like that's where whenever I was free of it, like to shoot, it would be midnight.

I dont know anyone who wants to be up with me at midnight Sure.

Especially taking pictures Yeah.

Okay.

When you go to put a piece together, do you know what the end result is going to be?

Or are you piecing it together and letting it sort of show you what it's going to be?

Just that.

Yeah, I just pieces together and a lot of the times, like, as I'm piecing it, I'll have an idea of what I want to make it into.

But then when I do that, it like, feels very forced.

So then I like, go back like a few steps, but then always like, ends up working out when I don't have any intention behind what I'm doing.

Do you ever look at a finished piece and and learn something maybe about yourself or your frame of mind or something that you didn't really realize you were thinking or feeling?

But then it, it presents itself.

Yeah.

When I started my first series that won more recognition, I didn't really have an idea what I was getting into as I was creating, but as I was developing titles for them, I realized that it did speak to like some things I was experiencing like that I didn't really talk about.

So I really like, played into that when I, like, made my artist statement.

Did you want other people to to feel those same things, or was it enough for you to just have that catharsis of of getting it out?

I think for me, it's a lot of because like, it's mostly the catharsis, but I have been like, told that like my work is really powerful and that like they can see a lot from what they feel in my work.

So I feel very like that's my main, like metric of accomplishment.

Yeah.

So you haven't been doing photography for long, but you are so accomplished.

You have won many awards.

Tell me about what that's like, how that changes things or does it?

Yeah.

So when up until my senior year actually, I did not anticipate like I didn't have the intention of continuing on with photography past high school.

Like, I just figured it was fun.

But when I started winning awards, I realized that there was merit behind what I was doing and that like if I did want to pursue art, like I have what it takes.

But really in reality, like when I look back, a lot of my like a lot of the things that influenced my decisions of what I want to do in the future was, Oh, like this could make enough money to start making art on the side.

So if I could just make art to begin with and have that be my occupation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Tell me a little bit about your process.

So we, we established that you take lots of photos and then you put them together.

But the putting them together sounds easy, and I realize it is absolutely not.

So I imagine that's a Photoshop process?

Yeah.

Tell me a little bit about that.

So a lot of the times I'll have open easily a few hundred images and I'll just like sift through, Ill edit a few, just like touching it up.

And depending on what I like Ill like just I won't save I'll just, like, exit out a bunch of, like, things that I edited and I'll stick to like maybe the five or six things that I like and then I'll duplicate a lot of those layers, put them on top of each other and in Photoshop you can adjust how the layers interact with each other.

So that's a main component of my process.

Is that something you learned at Carroll or did you teach yourself, or how did you learn?

I mean, Photoshop is completely foreign to me, so how did you learn?

So my teacher, Nicole Croix, she makes an effort to make sure that we know, like the ins and outs of Photoshop.

She makes us just, like, explore on our own and depending on what we gravitate towards.

I've noticed in a lot of other people's work.

Thats what like we tend to like, incorporate into our work.

Yeah.

Okay.

What is next?

Do you your your next series are you, are you the subject or are you changing gears?

What is, what does that look like for you?

So I don't know.

I do know that I want to incorporate photography somehow.

I'm thinking documentary photography and I just like want to put myself in a different environment and just like, photograph what I see, if that makes sense.

Yeah, but I feel like it sounds more boring than like, how I envision that.

But it'll come together, hopefully.

So is that, do you walk through the world now trying to put together a finished piece out of all of the things you see, which is sort of the way you work in terms of taking photographs and putting them together?

Is that how you function now, looking at all of these different pieces of the world?

Yeah, a lot of what I whenever I think about like what my next piece is going to be, a lot of it tends to be like, I get my inspiration by like little things I see.

But that now that I'm be more intentional about how I put my pieces together before, I just I didn't really view the world that way.

But yeah, when you say now you're being more intentional, was that intention there when you were creating your first series that was so renowned?

I guess each like series that I've made displays a different part of my life that I'm experiencing.

So before I had really no idea how I viewed myself.

And so that piece really helped me piece those things together by forcing me to be introspective, especially in terms of like articulating how those pieces connect.

Now that I understand myself more through that series, I'm exploring different like influences of my life that don't necessarily concern me specifically, but like, you know, whether it's family members or like culture, I want to start focusing more on that.

Yeah, which I imagine would be absolutely fascinating.

Tell me what the hardest part of creating is.

I think the hardest part is focus is when your mindset focuses on how people will view your work rather than how you view your own work.

So a lot something that I struggled with in the beginning was what would other people think about my work?

And that really that kept me stuck for a long time.

So by like when I stopped caring what other people thought, like my work really started to transform.

And so I would say, like for anyone who, like, wants to pursue art or just makes art in general not to get discouraged by other people, I feel like when I look at your work and I think of myself as a young woman your age, I would not only be concerned about what other people think of my work, but I would also be concerned about having myself as the subject because it feels so vulnerable.

It feels like you aren't just presenting this work to the world.

You're presenting yourself figuratively and literally.

Did you get that sense?

Was that scary, or was it more just about the art itself?

I think that's a big part of it too, because something that I was told like by my parents jokingly, but I know they kind of meant it is like like don't you think people will think you're kind of self-centered, just like focusing everything on yourself?

And I'm like, well, that's kind of the point with my work.

So.

See thats, I don't know that that would have been my concern, but just that it it just feels like very exposed.

Again, as you mentioned, that you are sort of laying out your different emotions and states of mind in these pieces.

You are brave and beautiful and fantastic and I cannot wait to see what you produce in the future.

Thank you so much for sitting down with me.

Thank you for having me.

For more information, find Bay Yun Photography on Instagram.

Our thanks to Norman Ziolkowski and Bayan Yunis.

Be sure to join us next week for Arts IN Focus.

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Thank you for watching and in the meantime, enjoy something beautiful Arts IN Focus on PBS Fort Wayne is funded in part by the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne.