Mary Zeran
My relationship with fabric began in childhood. My mother made all of my clothes, and I spent hours with her in fabric stores selecting materials for new outfits. Together, we chose patterns, and I watched as she transformed those choices into something tangible. Those moments extended beyond sewing—they instilled in me an understanding of material as a vessel for creativity, identity, and care.
After my mother’s passing, I lost the ability to create my earlier collage work. That rupture led me toward a more immediate and intuitive approach; one I have been exploring through a series of paintings for the past fourteen years. While I once cut these works apart, I’ve come to recognize a strength within them that allows each piece to stand on its own. At their core, they reflect my enduring connection to fabric, process, and color.
A pivotal influence came during a visit to the Seattle Art Museum, where I encountered an exhibition of Japanese textiles and discovered Shibori. Rooted in the 17th–19th centuries and traditionally rendered in indigo and white, Shibori was developed by working-class communities as a way to elevate everyday cloth through intricate, labor-intensive processes. Derived from the Japanese verb shiboru—to wring, squeeze, or press—the technique involves manipulating fabric through folding, stitching, binding, or knotting before dyeing to produce complex patterns.
While I initially approached Shibori as a tribute to my mother, I found its structure too prescriptive. I became more interested in the behavior of paint when it remains fluid, responsive, and in motion. This shift marked a departure from controlled pattern-making toward a practice rooted in instability, variation, and emergence.
I paint on transparent polyester film using fluid acrylics, allowing color to slide, pool, and collide across uneven surfaces. While the process suggests immediacy, it is highly exacting. Working in collaboration with fluid pigment, even subtle variations in viscosity can significantly alter the outcome. Each painting is developed through multiple passes, building layers until the composition resolves with clarity and tension.
Color is central to the work. I engage a full spectrum, focusing on the interaction between hues and their capacity to generate atmosphere, tension, and emotional resonance. The paintings operate as fields of movement, where color carries both structure and feeling.
Moving beyond fabric as material, this work approaches fabric as concept—fluid, responsive, and constructed through accumulation. Rooted in process and guided by intuition, the paintings explore transformation, control, and release, inviting a sustained visual and emotional engagement.