In Transformations: Layers of Time and Self, artist Marian Zielinski brings together abstract quilted works that explore memory, place, identity, and the accumulation of lived experience. Constructed through a process of digital layering and stitching, Zielinski’s compositions combine photography, drawing, painting, and printmaking with the traditions of fiber and quilting. Shapes drawn from nature, architecture, language, shadows, sound, and silence are reorganized into shifting networks of grids, patterns, and layered forms.

Throughout the exhibition, figure and ground continually move in and out of focus. Forms appear to emerge, dissolve, overlap, and transform, moving between the recognizable and the imagined. Color, texture, and repetition become tools for considering how experience is constructed over time. The resulting works function simultaneously as abstractions, maps, landscapes, and visual narratives—tracing connections between the personal and the collective.

Zielinski’s multidisciplinary approach reflects a life shaped by theatre, literature, philosophy, music, art, and the social and natural worlds around her. Her decades of work as a scenographer remain visible in her sensitivity to composition, spatial relationships, movement, and the way individual elements contribute to a larger visual experience.

The exhibition also marks a meaningful return to Mercer University. Zielinski joined Mercer in 1982 as Set, Costume, and Lighting Designer and Technical Director and later became Professor of Theatre. During her career at Mercer, she designed more than 150 theatrical productions before retiring from theatre in 2016 as Professor Emerita. She has since devoted her practice to two- and three-dimensional visual art while remaining an active artist within the Macon community.

Presented in conjunction with the inauguration of Mercer University’s 19th president, Penny Elkins, Transformations: Layers of Time and Self celebrates the work of an artist whose own history is deeply connected to both Mercer and Macon. At a moment of transition for the University, the exhibition considers transformation not as a single event, but as an ongoing process—the layering of histories, experiences, relationships, and perspectives that continually shape who we are and what we become.

Opening Reception

Friday October 2nd

6PM

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McEachern Art Center

332 Second Street, Macon, GA