Mirjana Cesar

Sunset nine

2012-01-26T17:50:00.000-05:00

My newest mixed media in the colors of the sunset. Happy colors...

I think it goes nicely with Yesenin's poem:

30x22

Here is this happiness

by Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin

Here is this happiness — silly —

Windows looking out to the lawn.

The sunset is peaceful, it’s gliding

On the lake like a scarlet-necked swan.

Greetings to you, golden stillness,

The birch, white and svelte as a stork.

Over the roof, a flock of jackdaws

Tends vespers to Lodestar.

Coyly, somewhere in the garden

Right where the guelder rose blooms,

A delicate girl in a white gown —

Chants her delicate tunes.

Grey haze ascends from the pastures;

Little night cold slowly creeps.

Happiness — silly and precious —

The innocent rose of your cheeks

Purple floral fantasy

2012-01-05T14:39:00.002-05:00

I love working in monochromatic themes. This mixed media involved a lot of stitching, which was quite labor intensive considering the size of the piece 48"x36". It it not easy to reach the middle of the canvas and sew back and forth. I cut the narrow pieces of fabric into strips and hand dyed them. The background is an acrylic painted burlap. Fabric strips were then hand sewn on to the background, as well as yarns and wood beads. Finally everything was touched up with more acrylic paint. The frame was done by my handy husband.

48x36

New article in Belle Armoire, Winter 2012

2011-12-29T12:48:00.002-05:00

My fiber art necklaces have been published again. This time in the Belle Armoire Magazine Winter 2012 issue.

Page 74, "Memories of Grandmotheer's Garden".

I really like the vintage look and how they photographed my necklaces, including some very nice close ups.

This issue is full of really interesting articles featuring a variety of fiber artists, and I'm very honored to be included in such a wonderful selection.

Yellow eleven

2011-12-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

Yellow eleven
36x25

Christmas sale

2011-12-06T11:27:00.001-05:00

http://www.cesart64.etsy.com

An interview with the artist Vesna Kolobaric

2011-11-26T07:53:00.001-05:00

I met Vesna Kolobaric on Etsy. Seeing her silver art jewelry for the first time was a delightful treat. She lives in a small town in Eastern Croatia, where I have spend a good chunk of my childhood visiting my grandmother every summer. She also studied in Zagreb, the city where I was born. Although I left Croatia almost 20 years ago, I feel a special connection with Croatian culture and arts. Vesna's art combines ancient Croatian history and resurfaces it in her new original contemporary designs. She has a curious mind and is not afraid to experiment and apply new techniques.

Tell me about yourself.

My name is Vesna Kolobaric... I'm a resident of the Planet Earth.... I have my own point of life on it – in Croatia. I've become more and more aware of it with all the possibilities available through the internet. A person is a tiny dot that scatters in pixels through the web over all the planet. I love this digital age that also connected the two of us!

What is your opinion of arts education? Is an artist born or made - or both?

This question is asked quite often.

There are artists who have no formal education that create impressive artistic work, but not many. Everybody carries something creative within themselves... the genetic code, the environment or pure chance direct the person into the art world.

I believe that education is very important as well as working on oneself and constant upgrading with self-education, talent is only the beginning.

Today it is easy to use the term "artist". There is a need to distinguish between creating something and a work of art.

What are your earliest memories of art?

My first set of colored pencils in early childhood… lying on the floor and drawing for hours…

Were there other artists in your family?

I was born into a family of so-called ordinary occupations.

In Slavonia, eastern Croatia where I live, there is a strong tradition of hand crafts, so called folk art, and this is my first experience of textile design learned from my mother and grandmother.

Later, I took a different direction in applied arts.

Why do you do what you do?

These are my emotions; all that I have experienced and lived through takes shape in my hands. For my whole life I showed a tendency towards arts. In the small town where I live there are not many options, so it was my own little world, drawing, ceramics, dancing…. Textiles and clothing have been by themselves logical to me, and they have become my lifetime occupation.

While in high school I was already making my own clothes, even a coat that was quite difficult by pattern and by implementation. I showed a visual break from the usual and I worked on perfecting that skill. There is a great curiosity in me, and I’m always exploring new techniques, working parallel with them and combining them…. Art is in me, I breathe it.

What work do you most enjoying doing?

Experiments are my challenge. I like to create in a variety of materials and let them permeate organically.

In my last solo exhibit that just completed I combined traditional techniques with digital media.

I created wall reliefs of women torsos using paper mache combined with soldering, all with experimental and ecological approach, photographing them and using Photoshop digitally processed backgrounds. The torsos were shown in their actual appearance with digital backgrounds. All of the images were burned on CD in addition to the catalog and with that I made an exhibit in an actual exhibit.

Describe a day in the life of you, the artist:

My day is a little bit different....first is breakfast with an enjoyable cup of coffee.... but my breakfast is in the afternoon because of my opposite biorhythm, so I work at night until morning.

The night is my inspiration.

Otherwise my day is ordinary like with most people... work in my studio, home errands, gardening, hobbies, socializing, internet...

You live in Croatia, a country with a rich cultural heritage. How is that influencing and inspiring your work?

My work is divided in cycles.

In the cycle "Pannonian games" I found inspiration in our ancient, far history... the Pannonian Sea that existed here in prehistoric times and on whose bottom I'm walking now.

I was inspired by Slavonian folk art expression and folk dialect, studying its geneses. With this inspiration I received a few awards.

Although later I created a series of cycles, I always gladly go back to "Pannonian games".

What jobs have you done other than being an artist?

Art is my only occupation.

I graduated in Textile and Fashion Design at the Faculty of Textile Technology in Zagreb, Croatia's capital. Through my whole career I've been professionally upgrading, I learned designing of silver jewelry and recently web design. I work in many techniques that can be understood as individual professions, but all in the areas of fine art.

It is a different technology, manipulation of the hands and the art of creation:

-when painting on silk, movements are slow

-hand weaving on a loom is a completely different technique

-unique clothing required knowledge of garment construction and sewing machine and hand sewing knowledge

- silver jewelry is the art of forging, granules of silver and alloy melted with a burner, poured in a plate or a rod, hand pressed into a sheet or wire, cut, rasped, polished.... It doesn't look like a job for women, it requires powerful hands.

-I recently completed web design so I will soon make my website, and also work for others. With it I perfected the work with Photoshop and I'm using it for the presentation of my work.

-I do patchwork, quilt, applications....

-in my textile sculptures I combine all of my visual experience

I have accomplished a lot in my work as an artist and I would need a parallel life for a second profession.

In Croatia, I have the status of a professional artist.

This status is granted by the Ministry of Culture to the artists whose art work is assessed as an important contribution to the cultural heritage of Croatia. I'm very proud of my status. To maintain that status, it's my commitment to do group and solo exhibitions .

Between the exhibits, I produce applied arts dedicated to the art market and I live from it.

What inspires you?

My life and life impressions, I experience it emotionally. A look at nature, and look at the sky. Into space. Everything I see, hear or read enriches me spiritually and it gets formed through my hands into two-dimensional and three-dimensional works.

What makes you angry?

Arrogance and injustice.

What research do you do?

I try to erase the borders between art techniques in my work. They are all interwoven in one expression.

I want to create a complex work and make an exhibition in which I would apply all the techniques that are known to interact in harmony. That would be a visual presentation of our time and virtual life in which disappear all the constraints set and conflicts that exist in reality.

Name something you love, and why.

I love original nature untouched by man because it shows us what we should be.

Name something you don’t love.

I don't like aggression.

What is your dream project?

To stay young and vital, and to work in my 90's and get older later.

Would you like to collaborate with another artist, and who?

I'm fascinated by the expressiveness of Portuguese Fado singer Mariza. Her voice is crystal clear on the air. I wish to create objects of wearable art and art jewelry for her concerts inspired by her songs.

Favorite writer, favorite song, favorite inspiration?

Writer: Tony Morison

Song: Purple rain

Inspiration: Space

Where can one view your work online?

My web page…soon:

www.vesna-kolobaric.com

My Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Vesna-Kolobari%C4%87-art/176297972380977

My blog:

http://vesna-kolobaric-art.blogspot.com/

My Etsy jewelry art shop:

http://www.genezaart.etsy.com

Fragments in green

2011-11-14T19:35:00.001-05:00

These few cuffs are the result of a couple of late evenings. That's a time when I like to do my bead embroidery, after a usually hectic day. It's great to switch my mind to the tiny beads, after the afternoon spent painting, and tending to my ever hungry kids that returned from school.
I love these free form explorations, and as usual I have only a vague idea when I start working on it, letting it develop on its own.

Halloween 2011

2011-10-30T22:28:00.000-04:00

My husband and I love dressing up as pirates. Our kids liked it too, all the previous years, but this year they decided to abandon our pirate club and they chose a different costumes. So it was just me and my husband living up to our tradition and having pre Halloween Pirate Day dress up. All of the clothing and accessories we used are pulled from our closet. Most of the pieces are just old clothes re-tailored and adjusted to look like pirate clothing.

Fantasy pins

2011-10-29T10:46:00.001-04:00

Here is a new collection of fiber art pins. They're really fun to make and an excellent way to use all the fabric scraps laying around my studio. I like their monochromatic theme.
They are great pin-on corsages for accessorizing fall and winter jackets and coats.

Purple sunset

2011-10-17T14:42:00.001-04:00

We had a most gorgeous purple sunset last Saturday. The sky was on fire and colors were changing so rapidly from second to second, as you can see on each new shot I took. Although we don't have many Fall changes here in Central Florida these colors allude to the end of summer in my mind.

Last week was my birthday, and as I looked for some 1964 trivia, I came upon this song that is well known to me. It was on the Croatian top lists all that year. The group was called Crveni koralji (Red corals), and they were very popular in Zagreb at that time. My parents didn't think twice about what name to give me, they went with the flow:

Song lyrics freely translated by me:

Autumn is
and branches are swaying in the wind
I'm sitting alone
and you're not beside me
anymore

O Mirjana, Mirjana, Mirjana

Autumn is
and the last leaves are falling
all the roads to my dreams
are vanishing

O Mirjana, o Mirjana, O Mirjana

But all the days
of our summer are still alive

when we were so happy
left alone in this world

O Mirjana, Mirjana

It's quite a sad song about a lost summer love.

Occasionally I listen to my favorite Croatian Station on the internet, and very, very rarely they play this song in some Evergreen show. It still gets me every time, it has quite a sentimental meaning to me. A link from my past, from the day when I was born. A link to my parents (who are not alive any more). It takes me back to the city where I was born, grew up, experienced my first love, and all the other memories, good and bad, until I left the country in 1992. I remember hearing this song when I was a teenager, and back then it didn't have this special meaning to me. It was just an old song from the sixties. Thirty years later, it's quite a different story, and I'm thankful to be able to tell a story about this song to my kids.

Flower series

2011-10-10T14:42:00.003-04:00

Recently, I finished a series of six floral themed mixed media paintings. I played with Fall colors, and I like the results. They are done on acrylic painted burlap backgrounds which adds a great texture. The flowers were cut out of cotton fabric, then glued to the background and painted with acrylics and markers. The first piece and the last one have some seed beads sewn through.
I'm definitely going to explore more of this color scheme in the future.

My Fall style

2011-10-03T14:44:00.000-04:00

Here is a little look at Fall style my way. I love good boots with jeans, and I really wear them any time possible in the Floridian winter (and that's not too many days here). Every cold front is quite appreciated here. It makes me happy to pull out my chunkiest sweaters from the highest shelves in my closet, and layer up.

The accessories featured with this look are all from my Etsy shop. Unique fiber art, handmade by me.
What do you think?

Ralph Lauren: Chocolate Chunky Cashmere Cables Circle Cardigan

Anthropologie: Joe's Provocateur denim

Carlos Santana Boots

Anthropologie: Leafy Crossing Tee

Cesart64 on Etsy: Fall beauty II necklace

Cesart64 on Etsy: fantasy VII pin

Cesart64 on Etsy: Brown fantasy clutch

Untitled XLIX - LII

2011-10-03T07:03:00.001-04:00

Flowers in a vase III

2011-09-28T11:26:00.000-04:00


Flowers in a vase III

Some of my favorite colors used:

Pistachio

Pale Olive

Pale Terracotta

Naples Yellow

Deep Turquoise

Prussian Blue Hue


Phthalo Turquoise

Washburn Imports

2011-09-24T10:31:00.000-04:00

Today I'm taking you on a trip to India, Thailand, Burma, Bali, Vietnam, and Laos... Well, that's how I feel when I set my foot in The Washburn Imports. This amazing store located in Ivanhoe Antique Row takes you to another world. Each piece they carry is an original, unique, one of a kind, handcrafted by artisans from the above mentioned countries.

This place has carried my artwork for many years by now and it's a great inspiration to me.

Yesterday I delivered my new pieces to the store and finally remembered to take my camera with me to "walk you through the store".

The owner is John Washburn. He travels to all of these exotic destinations to hand pick these beauties.

The store manager is the most helpful Paul Jones, and trust me there is no question that he doesn't know an answer to.

There is a wonderful collection of antique doors, that I would certainly take to my house if I could only have more space to display them. My newest experimental mixed media is above the doors.

My artwork is spread around the store, mixed and matched with the furniture and decor.

I love the look of this gigantic vase.

Mr. Paul Jones in the background taking care of the stuff.

In the heart of the store is a really unique bar called The Imperial. It is open every day except Monday, and it stays open after the store closes. It offers a great selection of micro-brews and boutique wines. I'm really a wine person, but I really like their draft beer . But we'll leave that story for the next time I visit this place in the evening hours when the atmosphere is relaxed and magical.

And who knows, maybe my husband will consider becoming a bartender as his second job. Looks like he likes that idea.

Passion flowers III

2011-09-22T17:19:00.000-04:00

Here it is, my latest big mixed media piece, 48" x 36" framed in a fantastic custom made frame (made by my husband). This is the third one in the Passion flowers series made with recycled sari silk yarn. The background is burlap painted with layers of acrylic and then embroidered with yarn. I don't even know how many thousands of stitches were involved, and honestly I don't want to know. All I'll remember is the back pain working for hours on this big piece and the pain in my fingers from grasping a sharp leather needle and pushing it through the burlap. But I had to do it, and I'm happy with the results.

Fall beauty

2011-09-07T13:38:00.000-04:00

I love autumn, always have. Autumn doesn't really feel the same here in Florida as it did when I lived in Croatia where we had the classical four seasons. I miss those foggy, misty fresh mornings in city parks, walking over fallen amber colored leaves, observing all the changes in nature preparing for its winter sleep. To me it was a very poetic time of the year. Maybe I'm partial to it because I was born one very rainy October.

Autumn is an inspiration in my fiber arts, and these are the latest samples of it. First one is a necklace, and the next three are pins that can be pinned on fall sweaters, jackets, hats, bags or anywhere else it matches.

Untitled XLVI-XLVIII

2011-09-04T08:45:00.000-04:00

My article in Belle Armoire Jewelry

2011-09-01T07:58:00.000-04:00

Few months ago I got an e-mail from Cynthia Levens, editor of Belle Armoire Jewelery Magazine. She stumbled upon my Etsy shop and liked my fiber art necklaces. She wanted to feature them in one of the upcoming issues. I have never written a how to article before, but I have to admit I had fun while doing it. So thanks to Cynthia here it is in the newest issue of this beautiful magazine.

Belle Armoire Jewelry is a magazine published by Stampington & Company (for those who are not familiar with it). They publish more than 30 truly wonderful inspirational craft magazines and other publications.

Vignette series

2011-08-31T08:12:00.000-04:00

Recycle, salvage and reuse is my daily mantra. It really makes me happy having the least amount of garbage (compared to my neighbors) thrown out on garbage pick up days.
Since my husband builds frames for my larger artwork, there is always a decent amount of left over wood planks in our garage. These pieces are ranging in size from 8-15" long by 5-8" wide.
They all got few layers of acrylic paint (some of them I first applied plaster for an interesting texture).
I used free style machine stitching on a piece of cotton scrap fabric, and then glued it to the prepared wood plank, applying more acrylic paint and washes to the piece.

Dodo stuffies and hurricane worries

2011-08-22T08:22:00.001-04:00

Here they are. First two stuffies made with Spoonflower printed fabric. I ordered 100% organic cotton sateen , and I like the feel of it. They're filled with polyester fiberfill. Their size is 11"x8".
They're listed in my Etsy shop.

This morning I'm watching the changed forecast for hurricane Irene. It changed significantly overnight. I can only hope that it will move more towards east and lessen its impact on Florida. Orlando is only about 50 miles inland from the east coast, and that is not much in this case.
Hurricane Charley in 2004 is still very fresh in my mind, and all the horror it produced. I can still remember a sound of wind ripping off my roof in the darkness of the night. Our tall palm trees snapped in half like matchsticks. Pool screen enclosure collapsed under the fallen palm tree and it all ended in the pool. My kids and dog were terrified, bundled under the staircase in the middle of the house.
Up until that morning Charley's track wasn't going over Orlando. It was supposedly going over Tampa. So naturally many left Tampa and drove to Orlando. As the day progressed Charley took a right turn aiming straight for us. There wasn't anything that we could do, except wait and hope that impact won't be harsh.
Since we got here in '92 Florida natives always told us, don't worry, hurricanes don't do much damage inland. All the trouble is on the coast. Hurricane season of 2004 proved them wrong, it was quite a mess.
It was impossible to get a new roof. It took us nine months, and for the new screen enclosure more than a year. Dealing with contractors was a nightmare.

So watching this track this morning gives me a very familiar uneasy feeling.

Untitled XLIII-XLV

2011-08-16T01:06:00.006-04:00

Dodo birds

2011-08-15T11:25:00.000-04:00

I can't believe I didn't blog for two weeks or so.
Life was busy here, hectic as usual in this household of five + dog (whose personality is more of a cat). Summer break is coming to an end, and this week is the last one to enjoy sleeping late in the morning, at least for my sophomore high school girl. The other two will have it quite easy with their middle school schedule, and plenty of time to walk the dog in the morning before they go to school.

I was busy in my studio despite all the distractions. I have a new series of florals in fall colors, just waiting to be varnished and framed. Another floral series done on salvaged wood with plaster and fiber, more fiber art necklaces, waiting to be photographed.

I also did a small series of simple bird illustrations. The idea was born one morning after I caught myself doodling them on pieces of junk mail in the kitchen. I like their simplicity, and I'll probably explore them more in the future.

My plan is to make a little stuffy pillows with these designs. This was my first try using Spoonflower services and ordering custom printed fabrics from them. I'm quite satisfied with how the images turned out, especially the red bird (considering it was my first time). While preparing the images with Photoshop I actually learned a lot of new stuff, and it makes me interested in learning even more since I wasn't a big Photoshop user, except for the purpose of editing photos.
I'm very happy with the quality of organic cotton sateen fabric I chose, and Spoonflower's very fast delivery. I will explore the other kinds of fabrics they have in the future.

Evening beauties

2011-07-30T11:12:00.000-04:00

Here are a few more samples of my fiber art necklace series. They're all listed in my Etsy store.
The tutorial on how to make them will be featured in the next issue of the Belle Armoire Jewelry Magazine, coming out on September 1st.

Morning beauties

2011-07-25T15:02:00.002-04:00

Last week I worked on my fiber art necklace series. Here are three of them just listed in my Etsy shop.
The theme is exploring monochromatic fiber collages. Each one is unique, since I'm using a variety of fabrics, some vintage with a limited quantity, and the same with my bead collection.

I like making them, and I truly didn't expect I would spend all last week just working on them and neglecting painting, but once I started it was quite addictive and the final finished number is 11. I'll be photographing and listing them through the week.