FORCE OF NATURE
THE BUSH IS A CONSTANT SOURCE OF INSPIRATION FOR TEXTILE DESIGNER YOLANDA ZARINS.
Textile designer Yolanda Zarins on how the Tasmanian bush has inspired her delicate hand-printed patterns.
FOR TASMANIAN-BORN textile designer Yolanda Zarins, the natural environment around her has been a constant muse. Many of her delicate hand-printed designs pay homage to the patterns she’s discovered when out in the Tasmanian bush; the tracery of a fern frond, a leaf or a seed, all lovingly translated onto linen cloth. “My work is very much about connecting with the place, and I’ll take snippets when I’m out in the environment and transfer that motif onto cloth,” the 29-year-old explains. “Nature often features in my work because I enjoy being out in those places, and love finding those connections.” Yolanda produces a signature collection of prints for upholstery and soft furnishings. Printed on 100 per cent linen or flax, today her designs can be found in showrooms across Australia, Canada and North America. Each piece retains the designer’s unique touch, particularly as each of the small print runs she does by hand has a different result. “It’s quite an intuitive process where I’m constantly thinking lighter and darker, in some places applying the dye heavier, creating a tonal effect and little areas of interest.” Yolanda grew up in Somerset on the north-west coast of Tasmania and the bush was her backyard. “I would just roam around having adventures and only come back home for lunch or dinner,” she says. “We had the coast and farmland around us, too. Sometimes as a kid it seemed boring, but now I think it was pretty special, and I’m glad that I had that real bush experience.” When she was seven, Yolanda’s family moved to Hobart. At high school she was keen on the arts, but working in textile design wasn’t on her radar. “In Years 11 and 12 I did all art subjects and had a general interest in art, design and photography, but I didn’t know where that could go career wise. I had a strong texture and pattern base, and when a teacher said I should look at doing textile design, I had never heard of it!” This revelation was Yolanda’s lightbulb moment. “It felt so exciting, it was the right thing for me.” She moved to Melbourne to do a bridging course, and then studied textile design at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). Initially she dabbled in digital print, a technique she felt “didn’t connect very well” with what she wanted to create. It was the slower, more organic process of hand-drawn designs using inks that really attracted her. By 2013 she was back living in Hobart, working in community arts while she continued to experiment with her designs. She also signed up to the New Enterprise >
Incentive Scheme (NEIS), which helps people who are starting their own small business through mentoring and income support, and was able to develop a business plan to kick start her textiles brand. “It was pretty amazing and it was working, and I built it from there, doing markets in Hobart, especially Salamanca Market every weekend.” The southern Tasmania landscape has been a great influence on her work so far — something that can be seen clearly in her choice of cool blue and neutral tones. “I use cold-water colourfast dyes that I mix in the studio to develop the colour palette by doing small swatches and experimenting. I’ve got a bit of a recipe book now,” she says. Mount Wellington, overlooking Hobart, has always been one of her favourite places to immerse herself in the natural environment she loves. “It was only about 20 minutes from my studio. All that beautiful national park area is really accessible to walk around. There are so many ferns on Mount Wellington — one of my first designs, Frond, came from there.” However, six months ago Yolanda decided it was time for a change of scenery and moved to Melbourne so that her partner Luke Andree, who has been studying winemaking, could work in the Yarra Valley wine industry. Luke now has a position at Mac Forbes Wine in Healesville, about an hour’s drive north-east of Melbourne. And for Yolanda, the transition has offered a chance to engage with new and very different landscapes. “There are so many new things around me,” Yolanda says of the move. “I feel very inspired by the natural environment and I’ve been going out into regional Victoria, but I’ve also been going for walks around the city. It gives a very different energy and there are different motifs in suburban architecture, even in fencing details. It’s going to be interesting to see where it goes.” For more information, telephone 0407 340 696 or visit yolandazarins.com. You can also follow @yolandazarins on Instagram.