Sienna Martz is an internationally recognized sculptor and fiber artist, constructing her work through alternative material manipulation blended with traditional textile techniques. As a vegan artist, she uses plant-based, recycled, and upcycled materials to ensure her work has a minimal impact on our magnificent planet.
(The text above is taken from her website.)
In this piece, we look at five of Sienna’s pieces, and talk about how they make us feel, and about what they remind us of, and about the specific strains of serenity they send forth into the world.
Nebulous
The universe is filled with waves, and repetitive motion is closely linked to enhanced serenity. Whether these waves are the gentle rise and fall of the surface of the sea on a lazy afternoon, or the placid movement of a summer breeze against your skin, or the way in which changes in electric and magnetic fields propagate to create light, nature owes so much of its beauty to ebbs and flows. Waves are also intricately linked to calm and stillness; rhythmic back and forth movements can still anxiety and aid focus.
“Nebulous” makes you want to sit by the ocean and dip your hand in the water, as it tugs insistently at your fingers while it recedes, and then gladly surges back to fill your hand again. It makes you imagine a pendulum made of cotton, and think of how soothing it would be to watch that pendulum swing back and forth, ripple and change before your eyes. It makes you want to reach out to touch it, to run your fingers over its contours, to close your eyes and revel in how it translates the inner calm of your soul to something real that you can feel and caress.
It looks like it’s made of the stuff clouds are made of, wispy yet opaque, shimmering yet real. Sienna used organic cotton to create “Nebulous”, and its many folds and layers are held together by thread and non-solvent adhesive.
Most of us would like to work or live (or work and live) by the sea, where we could listen to the endless ocean and feel the wind change as it ruffled our hair. “Nebulous” looks like it could satisfy part of that yearning, and bring the unceasing undulations of every wave ever created to our most sacred spaces.
Lissome
When our limbs feel joyful, they move. “Lissome” is filled with dynamic motion and vivid energy.
With nearly ten different hues, “Lissome” celebrates color. It also feels like each element and hue is an actor in a performance piece that is simultaneously elaborate and simple. In the same way in which an ensemble of skilled dancers weave poetry through their motion, the islands that make up “Lissome” seem to cavort and gambol before your eyes.
As with all her pieces, Sienna chose the textures and colors for “Lissome” with great care and intention. Each hue conveys a sense of comfort and warmth, exhorting the viewer to vibrant activity and energetic movement. The different elements are created with organic kapok fiber, recycled polyester, and upcycled fabric, continuing the theme of beauty surviving after the human world deems that fabric is no longer functional.
Sustainability is an integral component of Sienna’s work, and her commitment to using plant-based, recycled, and upcycled materials reflects her eco-conscious and vegan values. All the materials she uses (e.g. kapok fiber and mushroom foam) have an instant visual and factual connection to nature, but they are also vegan and cruelty-free. The ethics inherent in her work stand in contrast to the unsustainable practices of the fashion and textile industries worldwide.
In addition to being energetic and dynamic, “Lissome” is also a way to spark the viewer’s creativity – it invites you to go on a flight of fancy. For example, you might see it and think of how it looks like a political map of a country, with all the states picked out in different colors. But then you look closer and see the intricate details, and think of the geometric wonder of coral reef patterns. And then you realize how nature is infinitely more complex and strange and beautiful than human structures are.
“Lissome” is an adventure, a journey.
Beige Pachanoi
“Beige Pachanoi” embodies a theme central to Sienna’s work: that of reclamation. When you see it on a wall, the top of each column seems to leap out at you, almost like they’re bursting through the wall: Mother Nature undoing the millennia of exploitation and the centuries of concrete encroachment.
It is the entrant in Sienna’s Pachanoi series with the most muted color scheme (other members of the collection come in more vivid shades, for example: Blue Petit Pachanoi and MultiPink Pachanoi). But it is as vibrant as any of its sisters, and invites you to invest it with the colors of your own inner self. And the blue wall mount through which it bursts provides a study in contrast and a sense of deep calm.
“Beige Pachanoi” is also unique in that it was inspired by a variant of cactus. So much art that is inspired by nature focuses on lush green landscapes and flowers; it is refreshing to experience a sculpture that celebrates the beauty of the pachanoi, with its pendulous pods radiating from its center, almost like a desert jewel.
It uses recycled nylon with polyester filling, and is another example of how things can live on in nature. When Sienna reuses materials, the new forms they take on still hold the echoes of their past selves and lives. And, of course, it is much better for the environment than ending up in a landfill; Sienna estimates that 97 million tons of textile waste is created annually! She chooses to work exclusively with fabrics that are either discarded or second-hand, and with plant fibers.
Cerulean Flora
“Cerulean Flora” is a textile sculpture made from organic cotton, thread, paint, non-solvent glue, and wood. It measures 24 inches by 16.5 inches.
The two main cerulean hues of the sculpture evoke the natural blue beauty of both the sky and the deep sea. Depending on the mood you are in when you view it, you might be transported to the serene, untroubled skies of a summer’s day, or the magical, flickering crystal walls of an underwater kingdom, or anything else that conjures up memories of peace and calm, nature and healing.
Themes inherent in the sculpture include both serenity and growth. While creating it, Sienna took inspiration from the resilience of nature, the ability to come back against all odds. When it graces a wall with its presence, it brings a sense of strength and calm and tranquility with it.
“Cerulean Flora” has many ties with the natural world. In addition to Sienna’s practice of using vegan and cruelty-free materials (the organic cotton base), its hues at first remind the viewer of the cerulean hues of the sky. Gazing at them can help mental worries and tensions dissolve, just like looking at a sky flecked with clouds. But the hues could also belong to the sea, and the more fanciful among us imagine that the twisting leaves and vines along the columns of an Atlantean underwater civilization might look very like “Cerulean Flora”: tactile and organic, eternal and dynamic, alive and serene.
Flow Through the Hues
“Flow Through the Hues” is surely one of Sienna’s most tactile pieces, and one of her most powerful, a perfect explosion of happiness. It looks like flowers and feels like the sun; its uniquely 3D quality makes you feel like you can reach out and touch joy. The cylindrical arms radiating from the central ovals reiterate the flower/sun duality, two elements of nature that nourish each other.
The polychromatic color scheme selected for the sculpture adds a liveliness to the piece that reflects its name well. The color palette in this piece is vibrant and alive – with one side having slightly darker hues of red, pink, blue, green, and yellow, to the other side featuring lighter shades of their color counterparts – it’s all about the balance! We also love how neighboring colors work really well together; the level of harmony is something you wouldn’t believe if it was just described on paper.
The sculpture itself is an environmentally friendly piece, made out of upcycled fabric, organic kapok fiber, thread, and wood. It is also one of Sienna’s larger pieces, with a height of more than four feet.
The sculpture itself serves as an excellent visual catalyst for viewers to awaken the flow state within themselves – a physical counterpart to the mental state of meditation. It also feels like a journey; your eyes can begin anywhere, and travel along the sculpture in any direction, and you might experience what a molecule of water does when it courses through the tissues of a plant: serene, joyous, vibrant, energetic, and full of life. As you journey through “Flow Through the Hues”, you might experience a journey within yourself as well, a journey that helps you get to that perfect place both internally and externally so that you can create or move or be productive or rest and grow as a human being, connecting with our innermost thoughts.
Sienna’s Process
Sienna’s YouTube channel provides glimpses of her life and creative process. One of her videos about a recent piece – a commission for the Frenchman’s Reef resort in the Virgin Islands – is a great way to learn about what it takes to create an elaborate fiber sculpture. This particular piece uses organic cotton – grown with no pesticides or other harmful chemicals – as its primary medium.
To create the sculpture, Sienna started by cutting cotton with scissors into circular shapes till she had several stacks of soft white circles. In a process that echoed how nature repeats simple loops to create beautiful complexity, Sienna cut, layered, and sewed together all the circles, piecing them together into a larger shape. She has always been drawn to multiplication and iteration, and she uses this technique a lot in her sculptures.
Once Sienna had many groups of circles folded in on themselves, she started working with wood on her porch. She carefully carved the substratum of her sculpture, the platform from which the cotton pieces would emerge, into intricate shapes. Creating the final fiber composition was one of the most challenging parts of the creation process, and Sienna played around with the shape till it felt right; once she was satisfied, she hand-sewed it all together.
After finishing the composition and attaching it to the wood backing, she used D-rings and wire to make the sculpture easy to install, wrote a personalized note, and boxed the full piece to send to its forever home.
Links
To learn more about Sienna’s work, please follow the links below:
Website: https://www.siennamartz.com/.
Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/siennamartz.art/.
YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/SiennaMartz.
Thumbnail image credit: Joy Masi.